A Universe At War - Ilum/Open World Redesign

I understand your point - but it all comes down to money, and that drives everything. If EA is bleeding subscriptions, you need something that will fix the leak. Something that will keep players around, because EA expects profit, and so do the stock holders. The biggest mistake BioWare could do is NOT listen to the community. Whether they will or not is left to be seen. But, I guarantee, if they don't it will be the slippery downfall of this game.

The entire change is quite large, I agree, new planets, new bases, and everything on top of it. The changes to Ilum alone are relatively easy to implement, as someone else has said, the hard part is when it comes to QA'ing the entire thing.

Considering I discussed those changes with a designer from Blizzard and someone who develops for Apple I am inclined to agree with their opinion in terms of programming it into the game which would be relatively easy, fixing the geofence to generate checks every second or so in order to ensure people can't leave with any buff will be more intensive on infrastructure than programming. Generating the buff alone is easy to do and those mechanics are already in the game.

The mechanics to make bases flip from one owner to another is also in the game from the turrets in the Alderaan warzone. Implementing the programming for a logo to appear on the galaxy map over Ilum with either Republic or Empire is also very simple to do in programming terms.

The biggest part of this process is the Quality Assurance and testing of it in its entirety.

Sadly this is why the state of the MMO market is how it is, luckily some companies are switching on to this and are listening to their players more, CCP for example.

I am very sorry you have this jaded approach to the MMO industry, while there are some bad applies in it there are also some very good companies that actually have the best interests of the game at heart and aren't against doing something innovative.

Their focus is on retaining their current base, if you know anything about retentions then you will know retaining current players is far easier and more cost effective than trying to get new people to subscribe, if everyone posted in this thread then you can bet they would change course instantly or face suicide. The MMO industry seem to be very much everything or nothing and you do touch on some very important issues however you are not in a better position than I am to say what is what could be and what can be

Your post is appreciated.

how about only crafters with the right mats can make it.

But this is such a small vision.

Is gear really the only resource you can think of? You are not even fighting over gear. you are fighting to get gear. Shift your resource to something less selfish and more meaningful. What happens when you have all hte best gear? gonna whine at BW for more levels and better gear. tiresome.

WOW. go back to WOW.

Where did you get gear in daoc?

If you are looking for a problem in what im saying you will find it im sure.

If you are looking for better PvP than you had better learn more about history and why folks fight.

Please no GearWars..

I tell you what.. Go write up a way of getting this games pvp out the toilet and try and help rather than ***** at something you havent experienced in swtor or this innovative redesign. Because if Bioware dont do it, then EA will come down hard on these guys jobs in regards to future funding of projects. As the shareholders in EA will be chomping on the asses of bosses there.

wow you have totaly missed my point i am actully agreeing with you there should be more incentive than gear.... i even offered some other incentives such as a cross faction galatic trade network or fighting over resources ...

resources that can be used for a multiple of things crafting consumables, gear, spaceship parts (which would be awsome in future adaptations of the game if they do bring out space combat)you could even use said resources to bolster the defences of structures you currently hold

look at real life wars/conflicts are started over resources or differing beliefs ....

imo if you give people something that they can fight over it they more than likely will

I agree that it comes down to money, but companies as large as Bioware/EA are, by nature, very conservative. They're not going to throw more money at a project and significantly delay the development cycle of already planned features. They want a solution that takes the least amount of resources (time, money, manpower) to implement. That means that whatever they do with open world PvP, it will look essentially the same as it does right now. It might work better, or it might not, but it will be very similar.

I'm not jaded at all about the MMO industry or Bioware in particular. I think the people working on SWTOR are talented, creative, and dedicated to the success of this game.

As for innovation, I think there is quite a bit of innovation within SWTOR, albeit within a very recognizable framework. They made a deliberate decision to have the overall structure of their game be very familiar to players, while refining the mechanics within that structure.

As for retention, I agree it is easier to retain players, but unfortunately that isn't enough. SWTOR was the most successful MMO launch to date, but it has disappointed internal projections. They need to grow their playerbase. The Star Wars license is very expensive and this game was a major financial investment.

They cannot, however, retain subscribers by catering to the desires of the forums. People are too fickle, and don't know enough about business, programming, game design, etc. to make informed suggestions. They will undoubtedly take the "mood" of the forum posters (which is only a small percentage of the players) into consideration. Additionally it's just not possible for designers to implement changes in a fast enough time frame to satisfy those who are looking for that kind of "response." If someone is going to unsub because of Ilum, a promised sweeping change a year from now isn't going to keep them around.

So what solution would you suggest? Where would they get the information from that they require in order to see where the players want this game to go?

Their metrics are very limited and almost useless in terms of what players enjoy due to the limited scope of gameplay. I don't enjoy PvE very much however I have had to do it in order to keep myself active. Some players hate warzones however they do them because there is very little else to do. I hope you see this point.

Finally why do you post on these forums if you believe as you do, that anything you post is of little to no consequence and retains no value?

I love the overall idea, I was just trying to think of some suggestions for it.

One thing that I thought might be a bit boring in this is the long periods where someone is "slicing". If I understand this correctly that would me a player would be out of the action for that whole period ... or would it be like voidstar and they "plant" something then it just has to be there for a period of time before it finishes? I was thinking they could "plant" a crafted R2 droid or something .. and let it do the work so they could then defend or do something a bit more interesting.

Another part I really liked was the placeable turrets. Especially if they are crafted that is something that would be a major sink at endgame if they are continually being created and destroyed. Have you thought about expanding that idea into things like the shields, armor plating, force relics and other types of craftable consumable objects for the base defense and offense?

I think if they bases fortifications could be salvaged after the battle by the winning guild that would be another motivation to fight as well. You could raze a base, strip it and move on to the next, leaving it to a smaller guild from your faction to defend ... or sink all the resources right back in to defend it.

An idea for the faction balancing could apply if the multi-planet battle front was implemented. Instead of just buffing the smaller side, the large side could have rivalries introduced.

If a faction pushed past a certain point .. maybe the planets well behind the main front would now be open to same-faction attacks. This could spread out the larger factions focus and lessen the pressure on the smaller faction.

lol if this took bio a year i dont think id be around to see it tbh.
this seems very large scale but most of it is already in the game fs its 70% cut and paste code :P

they have hundreds of staff working on this ****, and 10/20 man group with a bit of skill could knock this together in a month.

Since you have devoted yourself to this path Chad, a system similar to AO's towers would be perfect. In AO a guild could claim and plant a tower site, and plant turrets/conductors which both aided in the defence of the site and gave the person planting a personal buff (xxx hp/nano pool or other stats equivalent to an extra piece of armour).

Now since Aneu has already proposed that bases be controlled by a guild, why not have slots around that base for mods/enhancements, these items will increase the hp of the shield generators, the damage of the cannons etc and give a buff to the individual who placed the item in the slot, how does 30 endurance 60 cunning 25 power sound for example?

These items would have to be crafted, giving some meaning to the crafting skills, even Artifice, since those cannons gonna need a colour crystal. Now the materials for this new line of crafted goodies could be gained in a number of imaginable ways, personally id say boss lewt from planet bosses, bringing pvp into more areas of the game.

Any way, just 1 idea, with the current state of PvP taking a dump on ones own screen could be considered and improvement.