Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why is this game considered a failure?
This discussion has been closed.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
not really. Some people are confusing good and bad ( opinions )with success and failure but that's nothing new here.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
It wasn't a failure, it is one of the few games I made it to end-game with several toons. The lack of massive PVP ended up killing it for me though.
I think why this game is considered a failure by many is because the hype for it was far beyond anything I have ever seen, and what we ended up getting was a mediocre story-based coop with a few mmo-lite additions.
I would probably still have it on my hard drive if it was not for Sim City 2013. EA will not get another penny from me until there is some serious changes on their part.
HOW??????? HOw could it have been more succesufl? It peaked at 350k subs when it launched and it declined from there... Before they decided to make the NGE the game was losing 10k subs a MONTH..
What you think people were just going to put down playing WoW and pick up SWG???? WoW hadn't even peaked yet when SWG made the switch to NGE.
WoW wouldn't peak unitl another 4 YEARS. So you are saying if they kept everything the same in SWG that 4 years from then its population would have exploded????
Why would people go back and play SWG? Keep in mind they can still go bakc and play SWG now on the SWG EMU but they don't the most SWG EMU has managed is 2,000 players
Expectations of many and its huge budget.
I would say for me, I was expecting;
1. Swoop racing instead of mediocre space combat.
2. Card game - easy to implement
3. Open world pvp with actual mechanics
4. Stable engine
5. Day/night cycles. Sunset/sunrise on Tatooine
6. Npc movement and simulated reality of living environments
7. Better and more challenging solo content in end game. The challenge was more for groups which even though the challenge was easy becuase its about gear and teams having good gear, thus any challenge was mostly attributed to group failures but still there are more complex mechanics in raids in swtor than solo content. The solo content is designed as a grind and thus no challenge and no specific reward for that challenge.
8. Linear quests/Side quests. No dynamic events. Became dull the 2nd time through and also the game lacks open world pvp, and challenging solo content, so alting is not as big as it could be... but at least class stories are fine as long as side questing can be avoided.
9. Discontinued class stories. 2 years since launch and no class stories.
10. Content development is slow. While the value is not bad for swtor and what they offer for p2p, and f2p, but when you look at the budget and years of development before and 2 years after release, there is not that much content. (edit: hence ppl leaving after playing the game instead of staying - a lot left the game)
And with point 10 for future content and them continuing to have a big enough budget they could have introduced many new mechanics such as mounted combat with a more stable mmo engine. Have more guild rewards for raiding and open world pvp. Have class stories and dynamic events rather than a lot of side quests. Thats just a personally preference. But admittedly dynamic events in gw2 felt a bit off and not as natural i was hoping to it would look blending with a living world. But... at least the benefit of dynamic events and less side questing is that it offers variety. I suppose in a very scripted way, heriocs can be similar to public quests but requiring pre formed groups.
11. Player created content. Music. Player made pvp maps / arenas with different rules... for example similar to a duel with everyone having one life, a guild can have a guild vs guild duel and each person can only fight as long as their hp does not drop to 1 hp. Housing decoration.
12. Character creation and species variety for character creation. Also species variety for the world. They focused too much on making everyone similar to humans that it felt that everyone shared the same origins and thus no one was truly different.
13. Player choice in which wz to que for, and offering several different locations for those maps. The locations for the maps could be on random rotation but a person should be able to que for hutt ball if they would want to, and not end up in the wrong wz they do not prefer.
14. Balanced pvp that feels rewarding and fun. As it stands now, I feel that combat is imbalanced with healing dynamics taking a precdent over other classses as a result hybirds and healers on one team will make a team better and easier to win rather than allowing for different strategies. Maybe at launch this makes sense, but 2 years into the game it feels imbalanced.
15. Music. People have commented on how they want to hear more sw music and be able to loop it.
16. being able to duel in any place including the fleet. allow for groups to duel each other as well.
17. Exploration to be important in the game. Its not as big due to crafting being more of an anti-money sink rather that something important. Also map design itself and too much beaten path as expect in a themepark, but it similar to point 10 and not having more than what they need for their themepark and beaten path.
18. Crafting. While easy and useful at early stages, it does not add to the game for pvp or open world pvp. The resources can be gotten by running companion missions or from raids or from random nodes in pve/raids. The nodes are not something special and thus do not attract pvp scenarios. Also for something as big to happen pvp should be balanced. A stealth class would be able to grief any player with similar gear in 1vs1. Similar to ESO no bonus sets from crafting good items which are not pvp gear. It makes sense in swtor more than ESO, since in swtor at least they have an auction house and the game focuses on rewarding the raid experience for a completely non existent open world pvp system.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
How do you define success or failure in a game?
If you are a suit, I'd say this was a surprise comeback.
Even as gamers go, it's an enjoyable experience. But I have to wonder, how many stick around for a long time or do they come and go. To me a free game where players come and go for short bursts isn't really all that successfull. Sure it is to EA, the numbers are high. But to the individual players, it's probably more like a filler. I dunno, I tried the game. It was OK. I played to about level 20 and put it down. Son't really have anything bad to say. but at the same time, nothing really good either.
Where it is a failure is in the expectations. Take the business out of the equation. As far as us gamers are concerned, it's enough to know the game will be around for the forseeable future. That's really all we should care about. Unless you are an investor. Did the game provide the overall experience that EA / BW had indicated they were going to deliver? No. It didn't.
It's a bit like GW2 IMO. GW2 is a successful game in its own right. It's an enjoyable game to me anyway. There are a lot of players it's always got something going on. So is it a failure? yes and no. I say yes because in one sense, it didn't deliver what was promised. When I look at the Manifesto and compare it with the game that released, It falls short. Now, I really don't need for GW2 to live up to the expectations of the Manifesto to enjoy it, so in that sense, it's not. So on one hand it's a popular game but on the other it didn't meet certain expectations.
It's the same here.
i stopped right here.
Ok in what world is a card game easy to implement?
do you not understand how complex a card game is to make? Seroiulsy nothing about it is easy
The only reason why it is considered a failure by some players on this board is, because the game did not meet their high expectations and because the producers made one or two bad decisions.
From a financial standpoint the game is successfull. Also, if I'm not totally wrong it has a growing playerbase. The point is that you cannot transform such a huge game from bemoaned to beloved within a second. It takes a long time and the DEVs seem to bring more and more stuff that the players actually want. The big problem remaining: If you got burned when SWTOR released you will most likely never go back.
When it comes to expectations. Well, I rejoined the game 4 or 5 months ago and started to play the game like the DEVs seem to wanted to play it. Slow paced, listening to the storylines and simply without any haste. And guess what. It is fun to play. The problem is that the majority of players is running in some sort of competitive race mode when starting a new game.
Actually, it did. Whether you liked the experience or not, BioWare delivered exactly the product at launch that they said they were going to deliver. The expectations for what the game would be when it released which were not met are not ones created by anything the developers said or did, they were constructed out of player fantasies about what a Star Wars MMO "should" look like.
Was the *post* launch experience what some of the devs said they were going to deliver? In some regards yes, in regard to class story specifically no, but to be fair, the people who indicated things would be coming which haven't yet (and in many cases probably won't) are not even part of the development team any more, and a fair number left before subs had even dropped enough for them to decide to switch to Freemium.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
two words.....
Hero Engine
If you trace back every problem the devs have ever had with this game it all boils down to that.
The moment those 2 words were associated with SWTOR it lost 1/2 it's install base.....doubled it's production cost.....and halved it's capabilities.....
SWTOR in its release form wasn't sustainable.
It led to the layoff of several of bioware staff, including some people high in the food chain.
It was able to successfully transition into a freemium model.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Are you asking as an investor or as a gamer.
Because the game is free to play the story and nothing else.
pazaak. they already have it in their bw game in kotor. they are just stubborn, becuase they want to avoid gambling in their game but prefer if ppl gamble real money in their cash shop with random bags.
Also they have narshadda, a planet notorious for gambling and yet no gambling in swtor. So i should have made a whole point of my expectations to also include gambling in a sw game. Apparently in beta they had a gambling machines as well...
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
To me it was a success. It was a nice mmorpg, that was standing out of the rest and had enough entertainment for the first 30 days. I never went back or continued my subscription after that and I rarely do - mmorpg's today are very thin on content anyways.
Anecdotal evidence has been suggesting for quite a while now, that a significant amount of the production costs associated with the game, were because the hero engine had to be so heavily modified to make the game playable, and even after all that they still had to take down the OW-PVP part of the game because it couldn't handle very many players in one area at the same time, think it was 20 or more players caused the game to become unplayable.
So yes, I would lay very heavy odds that the games problems stem mostly from the useage of the Hero Engine, and given that the only other game to use the Hero Engine has yet to go to beta, then chances are they have encountered the exact same problems Bioware did, and i doubt they have the resources to overcome them either, so will be surprised if the game ever see's the light of day.
TESO is using the Hero Engine as well
The rumor about $200kk development cost might be true after all xD
ESO seems to be dealing with it far better than SWTOR though. That could be the use of a later HE build than SWTOR
Or it could be true to the horses mouth that ESO never actually used the hero engine but used it as a template for programming their own in house engine. Which after playing ESO, and watching the huge PVP battles I am likely to believe.
SWG released before WoW and for its time had a huge amount of players for a MMO (back then 100k players was considered a good success) - but then WoW came out which no one can deny revamped the industry and brought a massive amount of new blood into MMO games - Sony/LA wanted to compete directly with WoWs sub numbers so they revamped SWG instead of continuing with the game its loyal playerbase loved.
So there is a bigger picture when comparing a game which came out in 2003 to a game that came out in 2011
What people reminisce about SWG is the core design, the freedom, the open way you could do so many things and the depth of the game itself - you could spend many hours/days doing many other activities than pew pewing monsters - something pretty much all MMOS lack in modern times (one which doesnt is The Repopulation if they can pull it off!)
Come on, that's really a wild guess. The vast majority of consumers is not experienced when it comes to game engines, database structures or other technical stuff.
Also, you can't really say that picking the Hero Engine resulted in increased production costs. Increased production costs usually are a problem of bad planning and / or intensive changes to the production plan while a software project is already in development.
Actually they only have 500,000 subscribers as of free to play.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Has-500-000-Subscribers-Sees-Revenue-Increase-351533.shtml
Millions would be an overstatement.
Plus they are trying to add player housing now. But is it too little too late.
For me it was. Love the story to death though.
edit: Space combat too could have been better. I mean on rails really.
The article is almost a year old though. So, no one knows as they haven't released any new Sub infos.
No it isn't a wild guess. Go look up some of the bottlenecks of the hero engine and why it is hated by pretty much everyone who tries to work with it.
Because the sub base plummeted 25% within 2 months after release, adding to that the sub base went even further down, a skeleton crew working on the game now and releasing content that was already worked on before Launch, and introducing a very bad ingame shop desperately trying to lure players back into the game, although for a few months.
Apart from that you see SWTOR as a success, if you are a Bioware executive, SWTOR is your holy grail and I hope you enjoy your new Ferrari.
If you are a player that enjoys real MMOs, I feel sorry for you that you are playing a very boring instanced lobby game with a very bad graphics engine that does not support >10 players on life support.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I think sub drops have happened for nearly every non-wow mmo shortly after release. But I guess I hear a lot about all those being failures too.
I just logged in and started a new character and there were 40+ people on the noob trooper planet. I was expecting less than 10 for this time of day.
Anyways, most games people rave about being failures here, aren't really failures.