That's the question on a lot of people's minds.

How did EA take such a successful franchise, get a lot of followers, and then lose them, almost in an instant.

What did EA do that could have been better, where did they fail?

 

This is a thread i made to vent my frustrations with this game, but i want to get a few thins straight.

• I am NOT Unsubbing.
  
• This is not Meant to be a QQ thread,
  
• Some criticisms will come about but thats not the point of the thread.
  
• I love this game.
  

 

I want to compare SWTOR to another game on the market. First thought? WOW. But no, so many people will chime in with the "Wow's been around longer" comment.....

So how about a game that's about the same age as tor? Hmm? How about Rift?

 

First thing to compare. Gameplay.

 

Rift Revolutionized skill trees. Sounds so simple to do, but they did. 4 base classes, like tor, but Rift has many, MANY skill trees to pick from, you pick from them all, 3 trees to go together, which means tanks can heal themselves and have a dps tree if they want, (They'd probably suck, but hey ho, they can if they want) Dps can go into support roles as a side tree, so can healers, so can even tanks (more sucky tanks) Its not advised, but its customizing your Character! And its great!

Lets look at SWTOR. It did great with advanced classes, they really feel like 2 different classes.

However, lets take the Jedi Consular class. Sage tree's = Seer, Telekenetics, and Balance. Shadow = Kinetic Combat, Infiltration and Balance.

Overall, making about 5 trees, one slightly different depending on class.

If this was rift, you could have Telekenetics, Kinetic Combat and Seer, or Balance, Seer, and Infiltration. It'd be your choice.

 

Now i can't say this is a fault of bioware, they made an awesome system, it could have just been done better.

 

 

Next, is well, fun....

Swtor just doesn't really have the fun aspect of an MMO, hell, thats the reason most people play games, to have fun. In Rift, you can find little items on adventures, that turn you into an imp, a water elemental, a goblin, a bat etc.... of course, combat breaks it, but hey hum, it's still fun as hell! Running around Rift's version of the imperial fleet as a bat, wondering over to the auction house, or even queing for pvp.... It's hilarious.

Its the small things bioware, hell, even a day/night cycle. a lot of MMO's have done it, why not you?

 

Group content.

Rift has a world event with every major patch, spontanious world events too, between patches, that about half an hour and happen often through the day. It depends on how many people is there too, and it has real CONSEQUENCES.

If theres a lot of people in the area, the invasion becomes huge. And i mean huge. And people can't fight them by themselves, you have to group to save the city, the state, whatever you want to call it its yours to defend.

And if you dont, the consequences are dire. Dont protect your cities? Say goodbye to your quest NPC's.

If no one went to do the Gree Event, bioware wouldnt give a ****. It's true, they wouldn't. Nothing would happen. The Gree wouldn't exact revenge on the Galaxy, you would pay no price.

You're not even asked to group. The biggest groups, the most social thing about that event was the Levelling Boosters, and that even got shut down.

 

Finally, the last thing i want to touch on.... The F2P model.

I currently Sub to TOR, and F2P rift. To be honest, theres no difference between the two.

I have no Warfront/Warzone caps in Rift, no Dungeon caps, no Raid limits.... The Subs get benefits though, they get to summon trainers and vendors wherever, they get free EXP boosts every day, they get free pets etc, and monthly grants and Loyalty rewards.

They have a cash shop in rift, but most of the things in there can be earnt in game anyway, its just easier through the cash shop, and that WORKS!

 

I want to sub to Rift now simply because it seems they care about their Subs and F2P players alike, and i swear, the F2P model for TOR is tyrannical. Even Preferred Status players have too many limits, my guildies sub lapsed the other day because his boss hadn't payed him yet, and he could do a couple PVP games with us before he was forced to log because there was nothing else he wanted to do, and he had to pay IRL money, or 200,000 credits as it is on our server, for a Warzone pass that he'd use for a day or two....

 

 

 

Anyway, i wanted to get that off my chest, and i have to ask, what do you guys think?

 

I'd like to keep this thread free of Flaming etc, but i doubt that'll happen, but i want to know, what do you think they could have done better?

 

I'll say it one last time, i love TOR, i wont leave anytime soon, but it saddens me to see what this game is becoming.

• 
   
  
• This is not Meant to be a QQ thread,
   
  

 

 

Oddly enough, by all appearances this is a "I wish TOR was more like RIFT" QQ thread. You probably meant something completely different though.

 

However, when you use words like "tyrannical" to describe how a game is run, you are indeed QQing.

Edited June 21, 2013 by TheBBP

Oddly enough, by all appearances this is a "I wish TOR was more like RIFT" QQ thread. You probably meant something completely different though.

 

However, when you use words like "tyrannical" to describe how a game is run, you are indeed QQing.

 

Yeh, re reading it i know that's how it came out....

 

Basically, it was meant to show where Ea could have pushed the boat out..... EG, they Havn't put Cross Server que's because it's too hard and complex, yet Rift has it because they know its what their subs want and they can't just rely on a Sub base loyal to the idea of the MMO, not the MMO itself.

 

 

I don't want it to be like rift... I want it to be like an MMO...

Edited June 21, 2013 by Selenial

TL: DR it's pointless to discuss EA won't hear you Edited June 21, 2013 by Altaress

it's pointless to discuss EA won't hear you

Don't you think it's odd that this entire community seems to think the Devs dont give a **** about them?

Edited June 21, 2013 by Selenial

Don't you think it's odd that this entire community seems to think the Devs dont give a **** about them?

 

as long as enough are subbing and they continue to make money from the CM..they really don't.

 

In Beta WE TOLD THEM they NEEDED to change the EXACT THINGS that lead to the exodus of players and to SWTOR becoming f2p...they didn't listen.

 

discussing it is fine...I've brought up similar points in other threads and continue to do so...however, don't expect them to listen or care about what you have to say.

 

it's like this...the game will continue the way it is as long as it makes money. And once it drops below the threshold EA deams worth keeping it going..it will just be shut down.

1) Underestimated how quick MMO players burn through content.

 

2) Did not have an attractive enough end game--at least at the time--for those who burnt through content.

 

3) Led to people burning through story content in a month or two and quitting.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

 

Problems are reported, bugs discussed, various issues debated but we can't make the Development team listen. It is obvious that they do pay attention to the forums but it is also obvious that what they consider to be critical is probably not the same thing that we as players see as critical.

 

Otherwise Cybertechs would have been able to RE Adv Cybertech droid parts, the Alderaan bonus series bug would not still exist, we wouldn't still see our GCD fire off without an ability firing and the thousand other things that still happen even though they've been reported and discussed for a long time would be fixed...or at least someone could have said something about the state of fixes (you know, we are working on it but...) at the least.

 

EA/BW went wrong in the same ways countless other MMO's have gone wrong. That's pretty sad considering that they had all of those other Dev mistakes to look at and try to avoid. It's not specifically an EA/BW issue as a number of new MMO's have made the very same mistakes, but I really expected better considering the amount of resources that were dumped into this game.

 

Where exactly did they go wrong? That's a question with a lot of answers that all completely depend on the person answering. For me, it's Customer Service and the little things like apparently simple bugs not being fixed and the fact that only class story missions are supported by CS. A company not willing to put the effort into the details (and this is solely my perception) fails in my eyes.

 

Everyone would have to answer this question for themselves, continue to fight the good fight and hope that someone opens their eyes to the issues before it is too late.

EA may have rushed it, but it was BW that designed a game where (even before beta started) they said endgame was rolling a new class and experiencing that story, where voiceovers were top priority.

It's fun and all to blame EA, but the game design was BW for better or worse.

They went wrong when they screwed up the end-game and the balance of Imperiai and Republic.

 

If you were here at the start you should remember the Ilum massacres that occurred every day. Most Imperials reached Battlemaster in a matter of a few hours slaughtering Republicans meaning PvP balance got thrown way out of proportion, 90% of the Imps were in Battlemaster gear wrecking everyone and the Republics had everyone stuck in some Champion gear.

 

Gear was major luck based. The most annoying thing ever. You would grind for hours to get enough commendations for a Lockbox, open it and voila a piece of gear you have or do not need and there's nothing you can do about it. If you looked at my cargo hold you would see about 4 sets of Champion Gear and Battlemaster Gear which is what I had to go through just to get the 1 set of Battlemaster Gear I needed.

 

Operations and Flashpoints got boring. Fast. They were full of bugs and again the luck based drops was atrocious.

 

Their final grave digger was the fact that they flipped endgear on its head. Got rid of The tionese, the columi the Rakata the Recruit, Champion, Battlemaster gear. Everything that players from the start were used to and they get rid of it all and mash together some new gear (which is all ugly as hell and all looks the same for both pve and pvp). They also made Battlemaster gear redundant, the gear most of us spent hundreds of hours to obtain by releasing that stupid expertise bolster update and this majorly puts anyone off from trying it again after being away for a while. - I know from personal experience, you can't get back into SWTOR if you played the first few months and come back now, not without MAJOR dedication which only the 1% will be willing to put in.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Monkfishysnow

EA fronted Bioware the cashflow to make the game and Bioware is the one who screwed up, not EA.

 

If EA screwed up anywhere, it was trusting Bioware to develop a MMO even though they had never done one before.

 

People really need to start understanding the fact that it was BIOWARE who made the game.

Edited June 21, 2013 by veyl

Note: I hate Rift. On to the question.

 

I always felt like they needed at least another 6 months to bug fix and develop some standard features that should have been in the game. Had they had a lot of the features that came in the following patches, such as Group finder, the Legacy system (other than being just a bar), and they really should have planned ahead and got that cross-server warzone infrastructure done while they still had the man power. They should have started with the mega servers as well. Had they had all these things hammered out before release, then they would have probably kept on schedule in releasing the rest of their content updates. Probably creating their own engine would have been ideal, and perhaps they should have considered a B2P model from the start. But I think they definitely launched with a distinct "unfinished" feeling that could have been avoided with a little better planning.

1) Underestimated how quick MMO players burn through content.

2) Did not have an attractive enough end game--at least at the time--for those who burnt through content.

3) Led to people burning through story content in a month or two and quitting.

 

I agree completely that they did this, but it begs the question of "Where did EA go wrong?"

 

They did not and have not.

 

You are talking about people who are completely addicted to gaming, the 40 hours per week and up people. And then you are assuming it is these very same people who will make or break the game, breaking it by leaving after a month when they've burned through the content, plus complaining about every minute detail of game play. The OP is flat out wrong by saying, "just about the entire community thinks...."

 

No, they don't. "Just about the entire community" doesn't even show up on these forums. "Just about the entire community" does not complain that the dye color green is really not green at all, but an off-shade of green that is inappropriate and must be fixed as soon as possible. "Just about the entire community" does not need customer service, ever, because they have no problems logging in, no problems with the launcher, and have never seen an OTP, so they don't even know that customer service sucks, which it does.

 

The "future of the game" has nothing whatsoever to do with this addicted group of players who will never be satisfied, who, if they are playing 40 hours a week plus, don't have a real life anyway. Everyone here claims to know all about subscriber numbers, but in fact no one knows about them at all. It's all fantasy.

 

The future of the game depends on EA/BW attracting a new group of players who are nowhere near as fanatical and nowhere near as "fast" as the current crop. These people will take a couple of years to level a few characters to 50. They'll play just a few hours a week, and they will be well satisfied with the type and pace of play.

 

In other words, the future of SWTOR is not you because you'll be going away, and they know it. In fact, they can't wait.

EA fronted Bioware the cashflow to make the game and Bioware is the one who screwed up, not EA.

 

If EA screwed up anywhere, it was trusting Bioware to develop a MMO even though they had never done one before.

 

People really need to start understanding the fact that it was BIOWARE who made the game.

 

I know, but Bioware is a subsidiary of EA, and EA was part to blame for it, by rushing it meaning no final tweaks and polishes.

Together they made this mess, it wasn't just one of them.

Rift was also terrible in regards to alpha builds. All that diversity and only one viable spec for each class per patch, and lets face it, some were not even that viable. It's not a bad game, but like swtor, they all have their faults. I personally have a lot more fun in this game. But hey, to each their own.

 

The "future of the game" has nothing whatsoever to do with this addicted group of players who will never be satisfied, who, if they are playing 40 hours a week plus, don't have a real life anyway. Everyone here claims to know all about subscriber numbers, but in fact no one knows about them at all. It's all fantasy.

 

In other words, the future of SWTOR is not you because you'll be going away, and they know it. In fact, they can't wait.

 

First, if you're going to call me wrong, then do so, but get your facts straight first.

 

They had 2 million Subscribers at launch.

They have 500,000 now, with something like 1.3 million f2p characters created since f2p went live (note this innevitably means its dropped.)

 

And how can you say it's all fantasy, when you are saying what a company wants, when they've said no such thing,

Would they be releasing Nightmare modes of TFB or S&V if they wanted to play to their less-eager gamers?

 

And if someone was so casual with their gaming, they wouldn't spend as much on the CM as someone who plays a lot, and in EA's financial report, it was noted the CM was the prime source of income for this game.

EA went wrong by not leaving Bioware alone. EA pissed off the real bioware devs off to the point nearly all of the real bioware devs were gone before the game went live. What they are left with are Mythic devs which screw up every MMO they work on.

 

 

SO basically EA screwed up because they didn't just leave Bioware to make the game they were able to make.

Rift was also terrible in regards to alpha builds. All that diversity and only one viable spec for each class per patch, and lets face it, some were not even that viable. It's not a bad game, but like swtor, they all have their faults. I personally have a lot more fun in this game. But hey, to each their own.

 

Here's the difference.....

They have worked to fix it. They have heard what people say on the forums, and they've tried to get it right, there's now many more viable specs for classes.

If I want to play a Mage, I don't have to go Pyro, etc.

Bioware have tried, yes, but you still see smashers dominate pvp, commandos still have trouble in PVP, and the one thing that brought some utility to the sorc dps, was demolished, not nerfed.

 

 

Just like to point out, I don't like Rift more, even though it may come out like that in my post, it has its flaws too, but I was merely trying to show where SWTOr could have been wildly improved, in areas it wasn't so good in.

I know, but Bioware is a subsidiary of EA, and EA was part to blame for it, by rushing it meaning no final tweaks and polishes.

Together they made this mess, it wasn't just one of them.

 

by rushing it? EA gave Bioware an extra year on top of their ACTUAL release date because they were so behind. EA doesnt have any blame in this at all, it comes down to Bioware devs not knowing how to manage large projects. Even stated by the former owners and other devs that hardly anything got done because they couldnt manage the large teams.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Girdeux

Mostly opinion. Not Fun? Are you kidding me?

 

I think you should actually unsub.

I know, but Bioware is a subsidiary of EA, and EA was part to blame for it, by rushing it meaning no final tweaks and polishes.

Together they made this mess, it wasn't just one of them.

 

lol, what? Bioware's development team were the ones who made the game, not EA. EA gave them the financial support that Bioware said they needed and the time frame to get the game made. Bioware then notoriously picked up a terrible engine and hackjob modded it to make it work for the game which gave them more problems then they anticipated resulting in slow production of the game. (gg hero engine). EA gave them the freedom that they needed to do what they had to do and Bioware -failed- at producing due to their own choices which you can mostly chalk up to being a MMO virgin in development. (And this stands out with how single player orientated the game mostly is.)

 

Bioware was told repeatedly throughout beta the changes that needed to be made and the warning signs of a stale life at 50. They did not listen and told the beta testers that they were there to look for bugs and that was it.

When you have a stubborn development team from the start that didn't listen to the feedback of the testers and didn't make the necessary changes to keep the initial huge flow of players, it is their own fault that the game imploded.

 

Again: EA went wrong with letting Bioware make the mmo in the first place. Bioware failed to meet expectations because they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

 

SIDENOTE: Rift's development team is the best in the business. I wish this game had them because they are on the ball with fixing things and giving the players what they want. I think the story/setting is really the only thing that held the game back.

Edited June 21, 2013 by veyl

Mostly opinion. Not Fun? Are you kidding me?

 

I think you should actually unsub.

 

Of course it's opinion, that's actually one of the stupidest things I've read on these forums.

Almost all of this forum is opinion! That's the whole point!

 

 

And I never said it wasn't fun. I said they didn't put the small little things in that make you smile, and laugh.

You either can't read, or didn't bother reading my post.

The one major thing holding Swtor back these days is its terrible business model. they'd have many, many more customers if they had a more user friendly business model like most other popular f2p mmos.

 

Whats the point of going F2p if you are going to make the f2p model so invasive you might as well continue your sub. It's completely counter intuitive.

 

If they just ditched the subscription option this game could really take off again.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Vinak

The one major thing holding Swtor back these days is its terrible business model. they'd have many, many more customers if they had a more user friendly business model like most other popular f2p mmos.

 

Agreed, I tried to say that in the OP.

Limiting people to a tiny amount of WZ's and FP's per week is ridiculous.

 

In fact, I'd hate rift if I hadn't got the awesome F2P experience everyone does, if they limited me to a certain number of world events or rifts or pvp per week, I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do.

Don't you think it's odd that this entire community seems to think the Devs dont give a **** about them?

 

From this comment, IMO you completely misunderstand the community and you over-value your personal opinion in the context of what a development team does (for any MMO, not just this one).

 

Most of the community understands that it's a game of a million + active users (about half of which are subscribers and the rest preferred/free), with broadly diverse needs/wants/desires (sometimes at odds with one another) and the developers role is to move the game forward in a broad and controlled manner.

 

Besides, if they did not give a rat dropping.. they would just shut the game down. So I consider your entire original post to be provocative and designed to target EA for your perceived misgivings about the game.