The sky has not fallen (yet)

[Nevermore]

Stuff.

So what you're saying is a game that has been knocked for being too much like WoW should be more like WoW in abandoning the class stories, which is the foundation of the game and why a large number of Bioware fans bought the game.  I also had no idea you were such an insider to be able to provide such specific percentages and assurances of how much development time each system of the game took.  Thanks for sharing.

The key thing you seem to always miss is everyone is not like you.  As Paelos pointed out, you tend to be more the exception than the norm when it comes to what players want in an MMO.  There are a lot of players who 1) like the stories and play largely for the stores and 2) make a lot of alts to experience the stories of the various classes.  The big difference between WoW and TOR is WoW was never about individual stories for the different classes, so there was little reason to continue to make more when there were so few to begin with.  On the other hand, the entire point of TOR is the class stories, so to abandon them now would be suicide.

[Maledict]

EA are going to put all of the Bioware studios on a very short leash, if they haven't done so already. Fucking up one IP is careless. Fucking up two begins to look like incompetence.

They've managed 3 actually in a single year which has to be some sort of record. They don't have an IP left that isn't marred by controversy, fan dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Except Jade Empire!

[Rokal]

The key thing you seem to always miss is everyone is not like you.  As Paelos pointed out, you tend to be more the exception than the norm when it comes to what players want in an MMO.  There are a lot of players who 1) like the stories and play largely for the stores and 2) make a lot of alts to experience the stories of the various classes.  The big difference between WoW and TOR is WoW was never about individual stories for the different classes, so there was little reason to continue to make more when there were so few to begin with.  On the other hand, the entire point of TOR is the class stories, so to abandon them now would be suicide.

When did I ever say more story content wasn't the main draw of SWTOR, or what people wanted most? It was the main appeal for me too and it's what I'd like to see as patch content. I'm not looking for more dungeons, raids, or repeatable content.

It's still what you're going to get based purely on costs and the desire to keep people subbed for longer. Spending 4-6 months of development time to make two new raids zones and a few dungeons is going to be less expensive and potentially keep people subbed longer than spending that same amount of time to do Act 4 for 2 classes, content which MMO players will eat through like locusts and be left with nothing to do yet again.

[caladein]

I don't see how it's a controversial opinion/belief to hold that "SWTOR story content costs more to produce on a character-level-by-level basis than it does in WoW or other MMORPGs."

And yes, that's why a lot of people picked this game up in the first place, but that doesn't change the fact that it's charging $15/month just like all the other games as well.

[luckton]

If this is going to turn into another Rokal vs f13 thread, someone hit the Abort button now.

[Kageru]

So what you're saying is a game that has been knocked for being too much like WoW should be more like WoW in abandoning the class stories, which is the foundation of the game and why a large number of Bioware fans bought the game.  I also had no idea you were such an insider to be able to provide such specific percentages and assurances of how much development time each system of the game took.  Thanks for sharing.

The key thing you seem to always miss is everyone is not like you.  As Paelos pointed out, you tend to be more the exception than the norm when it comes to what players want in an MMO.  There are a lot of players who 1) like the stories and play largely for the stores and 2) make a lot of alts to experience the stories of the various classes.  The big difference between WoW and TOR is WoW was never about individual stories for the different classes, so there was little reason to continue to make more when there were so few to begin with.  On the other hand, the entire point of TOR is the class stories, so to abandon them now would be suicide.

He didn't express personal preference or a negative judgement on other peoples play-style preferences that I noticed. He identified that producing fully voiced, well written and cinematic story extensions multiplied by all class choices is really slow and expensive and will be quickly consumed and forgotten. You only need to look at the amount of content in the patches, and probably the reduced interest for massive new investment on the part of EA, to form a suspicion that there will never be any substantial extensions to the story lines no matter how much you like it.

Which of course was the flaw of TOR from the start. Basing an MMO on extremely expensive hand crafted and specialized content and then thinking you can put that out at a pace, quality and cost which will keep every player happily entertained was overly optimistic.

[Nevermore]

Your 'small return' comment also leads me to believe you underestimate how many people play the game for the stories.

Player value isn't the relevant metric here, but how long it keeps players subscribed for.  A "chapter 4" gets you a month or two of subs from people and that's it.

That needs to get you a lot more subs that you wouldn't otherwise get with content that gets people to stick around for twice as long.

Player value of something is exactly what keeps people subscribed to a game.  But I think I know what you're trying to say, that if you produce something that players value as much, or at least almost as much, but it's cheaper/faster to make then that's the way you want to go since you're getting more value for the effort it takes to produce.

But that's the rub.  What other content are you able to produce that both cheaper/faster and will get people to stick around for twice as long?

[Nevermore]

He didn't express personal preference or a negative judgement on other peoples play-style preferences that I noticed. He identified that producing fully voiced, well written and cinematic story extensions multiplied by all class choices is really slow and expensive and will be quickly consumed and forgotten. You only need to look at the amount of content in the patches, and probably the reduced interest for massive new investment on the part of EA, to form a suspicion that there will never be any substantial extensions to the story lines no matter how much you like it.

Which of course was the flaw of TOR from the start. Basing an MMO on extremely expensive hand crafted and specialized content and then thinking you can put that out at a pace, quality and cost which will keep every player happily entertained was overly optimistic.

You seem to have missed the original point that was being made.  It's that if Bioware wants to keep the Bioware game fans (as opposed to the MMO fans) engaged and subbed to the game, they're going to have to keep delivering the same kind of content that got them to buy the game to begin with.  It will be up to the bean counters at EA if the cost of doing so will be worth it.  But I'm confident that if they don't and just try to half ass things with the occasional new flashpoint and operation, then they'll keep losing subs.

I fully agree that this is a flaw of their own making, and it's been said from the beginning that the biggest obstacle they'll run into is providing more of the storyline content.  But that's the bed they made so now they need to lie in it.  Let's be honest though; Bioware wasn't ever going to make any other kind of game.  With the exception of a couple of games very early on, it's the only kind of game they've ever made.

[UnSub]

Except Jade Empire!

And everyone LOVED Jade Empire! 

(Actually, I did, but the combat system was completely unbalanced to the point of infinite one-hit kills within any mook combat scenario.)

[Ingmar]

Jade Empire was one of two Bioware RPGs I only played through one time (well I haven't done Mass Effect 3 playthrough #2 yet, but I will), mostly because I hated the combat.

[Kageru]

You seem to have missed the original point that was being made.  It's that if Bioware wants to keep the Bioware game fans (as opposed to the MMO fans) engaged and subbed to the game, they're going to have to keep delivering the same kind of content that got them to buy the game to begin with. 

That's not a point, that's just wishful thinking. I'm sure Bioware would love to present rich slices of story based content on a monthly basis it's just incredibly unlikely to happen. Even with the full team it just takes too long to develop the content, and with diminishing subscriptions there's a fair chance that team will start to be whittled down making it even less possible.

Have they released, or announced they will release, any new story content? I seem to remember them promising "A year of content ready to go" and "we'll be keeping the full development team" prior to launch but I'm not seeing it in their patches.

[Surlyboi]

Why you hatin' on GW2?

[Also a very delayed <wave>.  You logged on yesterday right as I logged out.]

Not so much hate, as that would require some sort of emotional investment. I tried really hard to like GW and it just left me... Meh.

[Ratman_tf]

Stuff.

So what you're saying is a game that has been knocked for being too much like WoW should be more like WoW in abandoning the class stories, which is the foundation of the game and why a large number of Bioware fans bought the game.  I also had no idea you were such an insider to be able to provide such specific percentages and assurances of how much development time each system of the game took.  Thanks for sharing.

The key thing you seem to always miss is everyone is not like you.  As Paelos pointed out, you tend to be more the exception than the norm when it comes to what players want in an MMO.  There are a lot of players who 1) like the stories and play largely for the stores and 2) make a lot of alts to experience the stories of the various classes.  The big difference between WoW and TOR is WoW was never about individual stories for the different classes, so there was little reason to continue to make more when there were so few to begin with.  On the other hand, the entire point of TOR is the class stories, so to abandon them now would be suicide.

The retarted thing is the rest of the game is so fucking bland. I can understand a game about the stories. But then it's tacked onto an anemic, underperforming WoW clone. And that, IMO is where they fucked up.

[Nevermore]

You seem to have missed the original point that was being made.  It's that if Bioware wants to keep the Bioware game fans (as opposed to the MMO fans) engaged and subbed to the game, they're going to have to keep delivering the same kind of content that got them to buy the game to begin with. 

That's not a point, that's just wishful thinking. I'm sure Bioware would love to present rich slices of story based content on a monthly basis it's just incredibly unlikely to happen. Even with the full team it just takes too long to develop the content, and with diminishing subscriptions there's a fair chance that team will start to be whittled down making it even less possible.

Have they released, or announced they will release, any new story content? I seem to remember them promising "A year of content ready to go" and "we'll be keeping the full development team" prior to launch but I'm not seeing it in their patches.

'Wishful thinking' or not, it's what Bioware was banking on and it's how TOR will live or die.

[Nebu]

'Wishful thinking' or not, it's what Bioware was banking on and it's how TOR will live or die.

Bioware over-promised and under-delivered.  It's going to be the demise of this game.  Too many resources focused on the wrong things.  It's too late to get everyone back that they need to turn the ship around.  As they say "That ship has sailed".

[Sky]

Bioware over-promised and under-delivered.  It's going to be the demise of this game.  Too many resources focused on the wrong things. 

I agree, they should cut out pvp and operations asap.

[Nebu]

I agree, they should cut out pvp and operations asap.

I don't care what they do.  If it made the trip from 1-50 more fun the 3rd time, 4th, and 5th time, I'd resub.  Spamming the space bar to avoid bad voice acting and lousy story did nothing for my playing experience. 

[Outlawedprod]

Bugs like this are not helping them.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4302754

I just wanted to give you an update regarding what happened and to let you know what our next steps are regarding the Matrix Cubes.

After last night's patch, players reported that Matrix Cubes had disappeared from their inventories. This was an unintended consequence of a behind-the-scenes change to how mission items work. You may have also noticed some mission items missing if you were in the middle of certain missions as well.

The team has been working on a fix since this was first reported, and we hope to get it out to you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we ask that you hold off on contacting Customer Service at this time. Our goal is to restore the items to you as part of a new patch, without needing any manual intervention from Customer Service.

[Rokal]

'Wishful thinking' or not, it's what Bioware was banking on and it's how TOR will live or die.

They will attempt to live by refocusing development towards repeatable content. I'm not saying it's going to save the game (I don't think there is anything they can do at this point to get the numbers they hoped for), but it has to make more sense for them than more expensive, non-repeatable, fragmented class story content. As Kageru pointed out, the design of the game was flawed from the start. With declining subs that likely can't justify huge expensive class-tailored patch content (if it ever could have), you're going to see repeatable patch content that aims to keep people subscribed as long as possible. PvP, Daily quest hubs, dungeons, and raids. The legacy system was a good example, encouraging players to repeat leveling content they've already seen most of to level up their legacy level. Any story content you see will most likely be like the Rakghoul plague event: content shared between all classes and both factions, most likely staggered so that you can't blow through it in one day.

Anyone expecting Act 4 for their class as patch content, in the same individually class-tailored style as Acts 1-3, is kidding themselves. You might see that in an expansion pack if EA decides to bankroll one.

[Soln]

Although I really want LFG just so I can finally see the rest of the flashpoints, the real reason I play is for the stories of each class. 

Same here.  But I won't resub till there's LFD.  Too many times stuck on empty planets with Heroics just sitting there.

[UnSub]

If you look at the 38 countries, there are like 3 that might make a small blip on the radar in terms of sub numbers (Turkey, Ukraine, Israel), while the others are basically names on a list (like, uh, Moldova, or Afghanistan).

I'd wondered what country list you were talking about, and Google is my friend: New Europe and Middle East list.

Not on that list was the Asia Pacific country launch into Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong on March 1.

I'm not suspecting that any one country provided a massive bump, but the sum total helps hide declines in the original launch countries. After all, they've launched in over 40 countries since January and their player population is down by a fifth.

[Kageru]

I doubt it added any meaningful numbers. Launching months after the US release date is fine if they have positive word of mouth and the money for a local advertising campaign but they had neither as far as I could see. So pretty much the only people who moved to the Australian servers would be the Australians who'd already been playing for months on the US servers. Singapore and HK probably stayed where they were since US latency is probably about the same as their latency to Australia.

I do suspect the numbers are more rosy than the reality. Free trials, discounting the box price, a free month and a lot of people buying long subscription periods at launch will all conceal some percentage of people who still count as subscribers but are far from active and unlikely to remain subscribed. The decline is probably steeper than it looks, and even the "level on of each class" people will burn out unless they can deliver some pretty compelling new content.

Though they really need to get serious with server merges. Maybe they can actually do that now that they've squeaked through another investor presentation.

[FieryBalrog]

I think Subs will continue to keep dipping down and down until they release a new content patch that actually expands the class/companion story lines. That's where the solo players investment is currently and that's what will actually bring people back in huge numbers. It's what they've failed to deliver on so far, that constant stream of personalized story.

This is where the shittiness and short-sightedness of their MMO game design really becomes apparent. Because they completely painted themselves into a corner. Instead of delivering continuing story updates to 100% of their players (already daunting), they have to deliver 8 separate story updates at a time to 1/8 of their players each (basically impossible).

They could try just going with a generic continuing storyline that all classes can get involved in, but that's not what the single player game was for people. That's not how they sold the boxes either, and that's not what drew people in. And currently they've been trying to do that in a half-assed way through Ops and FPs, which is definitely not the avenue appropriate for the casual single player audience.

It's the base design of the game that's broken. You get retention either through solo grind (vanilla wow leveling) or multiplayer repeatable content (EQ leveling, vanilla WoW end game), and the draw of this game was neither of those. Leveling is too fast and accessible, and has to be in this day and age, for long term retention, and the repeatable content is precisely NOT what people are playing TOR for.

1) Play like a single player RPG for 50 levels to finish your epic class story! Brought to you by Bioware, RPG artisans extraordinaire! You've beat the game!

...

2) soooo ... please continue to play our bog standard WoW end game? Please? $15 a month isn't much, it's less than a cup of coffee a day!

[Margalis]

'Wishful thinking' or not, it's what Bioware was banking on and it's how TOR will live or die.

If they spend a lot of money on story, retain a decent number of players, but lose money per sub the game still dies.

They don't appear to have any sort of clever production tricks for creating decent story quickly and cheaply. Creating high-quality story content has a high fixed cost, which might be justifiable with huge sub numbers but makes little sense without them.

They spent a ton of money on a lot of story and already have a bunch of people unsubscribing, and many more who don't log in much and are going to unsub in the nearish future. There's no way they can spend comparable money unless there is some reason to believe the new content will be more cost-effective. And a lot of people aren't even complaining about the story as much as about LFD and mechanical issues and such. It's just a question of how expensive is the fixed cost of story creation vs. how many people more story content will retain.

It's that if Bioware wants to keep the Bioware game fans (as opposed to the MMO fans) engaged and subbed to the game, they're going to have to keep delivering the same kind of content that got them to buy the game to begin with.

There's no incentive to keep Bioware fans if doing so is monumentally expensive. I had a friend who worked at CarOrder.com - they lost money on every car they sold. They had their "best" month (in number of cars sold) a month before they had a hiring freeze then went out of business.

Creating high-quality story content will lose Bioware money unless they can amortize the cost across a large number of subscribers. I'm not going to claim to know exactly how much their content costs to create but it's hard to imagine that the value proposition is there.

[Maledict]

I disagree that it is too easy to level in TOR. In my package of solutions to fix the game I'd change it the other way:

- quadruple the experience gain from questing and killing.
- reduce the number of non-class quests on each planet by half, maybe more. (they flat out suck!)
- cut the number of planets you need to visit by half, and use the other worlds to cate alternate storylines. It's stupid having every character visit every world for every storyline. Make it so at level 20 I get to chose between Nar Shaada or Tatooine, and there's enough content on those worlds to get me to the next pair of planets.

Also the Rokal hate from cata is silly. He has a completely valid point re. building of more content.

[Kageru]

I disagree that it is too easy to level in TOR. In my package of solutions to fix the game I'd change it the other way:

- quadruple the experience gain from questing and killing.
- reduce the number of non-class quests on each planet by half, maybe more. (they flat out suck!)
- cut the number of planets you need to visit by half, and use the other worlds to cate alternate storylines. It's stupid having every character visit every world for every storyline. Make it so at level 20 I get to chose between Nar Shaada or Tatooine, and there's enough content on those worlds to get me to the next pair of planets.

Also the Rokal hate from cata is silly. He has a completely valid point re. building of more content.

It would be interesting if additional characters after you have capped one had a significantly different path. Use the legacy system to increase the XP payout and decrease the shared quests with each capped character. Maybe even add some random events, perhaps referencing your other characters, to juice up the experience. They won't do it though because that's a lot of work (in terms of making the quest flow flexible) for a group that's already proved they're willing to repeat quests indefinitely in order to level alts.

[Ingmar]

Subsequent characters do level faster, since the Legacy system gives you presence bonuses for each capped out companion (and a fat 100 points for hitting 50 with a human.) This significantly increases the power of your next character's companion characters, so you get through things faster, can take on Heroics with fewer people than before, etc. Doing 'everything' on each planet so far on this playthrough has me significantly outleveling each one by the end, and that's without even touching alternate sources of XP like space combat, flashpoints, or PVP.

It's also been pretty trivial to skip large sections here and there when we don't feel like doing them again, as well - especially since there are the bonus quest sections on each planet that you can sub in on various playthroughs in place of stuff on other planets, etc. Don't want to do much on Tattooine, do the Nar Shaddaa bonus instead, that sort of thing. The leveling experience is not as repetitive as people would have you believe (until Act 3, anyway - it does seem to slow down enough there that you can't skip as much, which is why Belsavis feels like a bit of a roadblock every time).

Supposedly they're working on having your characters make cameos in each other's stories at some point down the road, it was mentioned in some interview or another as something that Legacy might allow them to eventually do.

[amiable]

I still say (and this has been voiced by many others on this board) was that the fundamental flaw of this game is that they designed it to compete with WoW circa 2005 not WoW circa 2012. 

No respecs?
No Lfg?
No world PvP objectives?
Ridiculuous travel/loading screens?
No wardrobe funciton to swtich gear?
No easy way to customize appearance?
Poor combat repsonsiveness?  (although this has improved).

I feel like they locked themselves into a bad engine early on that has made making these features avialable lot more difficult than it should be.  That's a management/design problem.

[Lantyssa]

Subsequent characters do level faster, since the Legacy system gives you presence bonuses for each capped out companion (and a fat 100 points for hitting 50 with a human.) This significantly increases the power of your next character's companion characters, so you get through things faster, can take on Heroics with fewer people than before, etc. Doing 'everything' on each planet so far on this playthrough has me significantly outleveling each one by the end, and that's without even touching alternate sources of XP like space combat, flashpoints, or PVP.

This only applies IF you've capped out a companion or hit 50 with a human.  I've been in since the head start, have two 50s, and none of this applies to me.  (Vette is my highest companion at 9k.  Most are sub-4k.)  The only Legacy bonus I have is the Inquisitor/Warrior buff added to all my characters.

Duoing also makes a massive difference over soloing in advancement.

Sure I'm better than a newbie.  I know lots of tricks, have the mechanics down, and can support alts through crafting.  However, there can be a huge difference in boost between two players depending upon their choices.

[Paelos]

What many of your are suggesting as the way to economically solve the games problems really boils down to a bait and switch on the consumer. It won't work.

[caladein]

This only applies IF you've capped out a companion or hit 50 with a human.  I've been in since the head start, have two 50s, and none of this applies to me.  (Vette is my highest companion at 9k.  Most are sub-4k.)

It's not from capping out affection but from finishing all their quests and dialogues.  For most the last one is in that 9.5k range though.

And I just bought the Human unlock for 500k as I'm never making any in the first place.  190 bonus presence (human, 9/10 companions on my 50s) and my Vanguard's first companion has just been a wrecking ball for a few planets now.

[Lantyssa]

It's not from capping out affection but from finishing all their quests and dialogues.  For most the last one is in that 9.5k range though.

There isn't much difference since they are restricted by affection.

It'll be a long time before I have 500k I can spend on an unlock.  I'm still working on getting speeder training on one 50.

[Nevermore]

They will attempt to live by refocusing development towards repeatable content.

Anyone expecting Act 4 for their class as patch content, in the same individually class-tailored style as Acts 1-3, is kidding themselves. You might see that in an expansion pack if EA decides to bankroll one.

This is why I love when you make such declarative statements as though you're in the room with the developers and can pass off some kind of inside knowledge as 'fact'.  From the March guild summit:

Q: Any updates on same gender romance? A: its coming with story updates sometime this year. It wil depend on our writers. When we do this, we don’t want just change the dialogue to the other gender. We want new romance arcs – it ended being a budget and scheduling issue etc. Its coming when full story comes. which is this year.

You all keep arguing against the straw man than continuing the stories would be easy and/or inexpensive.  No one is saying either one.  It doesn't matter how expensive, time-consuming, inefficient or unlikely continuing the story arcs is; all of that impacts the ability of Bioware to produce the content but none of it changes the desire of players to want the content.

As the above transcript shows, Bioware is either planning for a paid expansion this year (has any MMO ever had a paid expansion within the first year of release?) or they're planning on one of the content updates to extend the stories.  There's a rumor flying around that Bioware has even moved people off of Dragon Age III and pushed back its release to help with TOR.  My uninformed guess would be if that's true, its probably to help with the story aspect since it seems unlikely DAIII devs would be pulled for their expertise in cross server queuing or PvP.

Edit:

More stuff from that guild summit to reinforce my ponit:

Current state of PVE:

    Leveling is in good shape but need more story
    #1 thing from exit polls – people want more story

Future of PVE

    Dual/mutlispecs – coming in 2 parts –1st part allow switch between skill trees, 2nd part switching changes to gear loadouts as well.
    When do we get more story? This year

[caladein]

has any MMO ever had a paid expansion within the first year of release?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=EverQuest_II_expansions&oldid=484690252

Kunark (EQ1) and The Second Age (UO) miss that cut-off barely.  A few others are in the year-and-a-half range: CoH, LotRO, SWG.

E: Shrouded Isles was 13 months after DAoC came out as well.

[Rokal]

Current state of PVE:

    Leveling is in good shape but need more story
    #1 thing from exit polls – people want more story

They can and will introduce 'story' as patch content, it's just probably not going to be in the expensive format players want. The Rakghoul plague event was story content, and it's the sort of cheap/efficient story content you're likely to continue seeing.

Its coming when full story comes. which is this year.

As if developers never have been dishonest, or had their grand plans cut down when their publisher decided that money planned for them would be better spent elsewhere. At PAX the SWTOR devs also said that after 1.2 patches would be coming monthly, want to bet on how that pans out?

We can wait and see just what sort of patch content they end up putting out. You can either make the logical conclusion that 1.1 and 1.2 were hints of the sort of content you'll be seeing from patches (QoL and repeatable content) especially with subs falling, or you can read into what developers have said about their underperforming game and hold your breath for class story content.