Bioware has been attempting some pretty ridiculous tactics of late in an effort to retain the dwindling and dying Level 50 end game player base. One thing that Bioware failed to realise when developing SWTOR was that the majority of its "hype" and lasting appeal would be built upon the comments and feedback coming out of level 50s at endgame and, again as we all know, these comments are most often NOT positive.

The sad fact is that Bioware has failed utterly in its efforts to create another blockbuster MMO. Whilst EA maintain that 1,000,000 subscribers would be the "sweet spot" for profitability, analysts are now trending EAs 2013 profits down by quite a margin. This isn't just because of the general failure by EA to take the fight to Activision, but largely due to SWTORs failure to live up to expectations.

It's also worth noting that EA shares have fallen amid concerns that SWTOR is failing.

In a note to clients, analyst Todd Mitchell wrote that "creeping concerns" about the performance of "Star Wars" -- which was released in late December -- is causing him to trim his earnings estimates for the 2013 fiscal year. "

 

Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions," Mitchell wrote.

So what can Bioware do to alleviate this problem?

The reality is that James Ohlen and company need to start LISTENING to their players. Flippant remarks about how they are doing just that aren't going to cut it if they wish to retain EAs favour (or conversely avoid EA shutting down Bioware Austin, which is inevitable if the current failure continues). It is unlikely that cheap tactics like dropping a patch before renewal day and/or offering Founder achievements for those who remain until March is going to sedate or please the players base.

Anything short of a total overhaul to the many end game systems that are broken - ideally before March - will inevitably result in further player decline.

Some things that I personally believe need to be solved in the next COUPLE OF WEEKS ;D:

1 - A dungeon finder needs to be added to allow easy access to flash points and hard modes.

2 - The UI needs a near-total overhaul. It's rubbish.

3 - End game story mode needs to be added as soon as is possible. People wish to continue their characters stories, and most find the idea of levelling alts a hinderance at best as some of the post-35 levelling content was just awful.

4 - More warzones need to be added. Launching with 3 warzones, one that pops constantly, was just unacceptable.

5 - Problems with Ilum persist, and Bioware are being lethargic in their dealings with them. Base camping is still a problem, and it would be ideal if bases were nothing more than launching platforms for the fight. (I have an idea: make it so that within a radius of X of each base, kills do not award you anything, and move the cannons into mid-field, between central and southern, and northern and central. In addition, add a buff that stacks with other valor buffs as a radial buff around control points. Also make a "planet wide" ops group that EVERY person who goes to Ilum is in by default)

5 - PvP loot distribution needs to be totally rethought. Apply a "band aid" to Battlemaster gear just doesn't cut it. Champion's Bags are a poor idea, and were always going to be a poor idea.

6 - SORT OUT THE FPS ISSUES, AND DON'T FOB US OFF WITH AN "IT'S ONLY 5% OF PLAYERS" RUBBISH EXCUSE. It's a prevalent issue that will drive players away, and you have to solve it or suffer for it.

7 - FIX THE ABILITY DELAY AS A PRIORITY. Seriously. This single issue will cost you a GREAT deal of players, and they AREN'T going to be willing to wait for you to "get round to it", regardless of how complicated you'd like us all to think it is. This should be your TOP priority on the systems side of things. You should be moving coders from other, non-critical projects onto this issue. It needs to be fixed.

These are just a few issues that I have with the game, but there are a plethora more waiting in the wings to come to the fore. People would like to believe that it ends here, that once these issues are solved the game will be amazing. The truth is that below these issues, there are a hundred more issues waiting to kick us in the teeth.

EA charged a premium price for SWTOR. They are asking me for £8.99 a month. If they want that, they really should consider working for that money. Bioware really should re-prioritise their plan of action with Star Wars, and start listening to what us players have to say. I'm not suggesting that I have the answers. Sadly however we do know what we DON'T like, and Bioware should be dealing with those issues first before adding in any content on top of that flawed foundation.

I personally am going to give you guys one more month. If by the end of February things aren't resolve, me and my guildies have already decided to unsubscribe. We can barely tolerate logging in now to run pathetic PvP sessions that end up punishing us for our time.

This post (outside of the start) is just my opinion of the game. I realise there is a group of people that think it's amazing. That means nothing to me. There was a group of people that thought Warhammer was amazing.. all 100k of them. Same goes for AoC... all 75k of them. SWTOR does not deserve to end up like that after the amount of effort Bioware claimed to be putting into it.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Dungeon finder should be their #1 priority. That exclusion alone can kill this game. It was a horrible omission.

Once that is in place you'll want transmogrify aswell.

The thing is Bioware is clearly listening if you pay attention to the dev tracker or watched the newest little patch trailer

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/coming-star-wars-old-republic

it's cool, myself and many others will be back when the game is what we want it to be. no reason to get all dramatic omgzz

Once that is in place you'll want transmogrify aswell.

Actually the functionality of transmogrify is already in the game in the way they have handled gear progression as it is.

To attack a poster for asking for a content addition that would add greater functionality to the game is poor form, sir.

The fact is: a dungeon finder makes the game more accessible to casual players. Casual players are the bread and butter of the mass market MMO. You may not like that, but it's the truth. To omit such a system when developing a mass market, casual centric MMO is a madness.

What they should have done from the jump is make it less like WoW.

People who like the WoW playstyle are... (wait for it.)

Playing WoW!

Everything TOR has to offer has been done and in a lot of circumstances, done better by someone else (that includes BW's own single player games voice over/acting).

There is a huge disconnect between the KOTOR part of the game and the MMO style of the game.

the game as a whole seems very schizophrenic. Back during the early part of summer they had a build out that totally rocked. People loved it. There was a great mod system, classes felt "right" (especially jedis).

It felt familiar but different, even innovative in parts (mod system), but they kept making more and more changes to bring it in line with the WoW mentality.

It just doesn't gel.

Hopefully something will be done.

Actually the functionality of transmogrify is already in the game in the way they have handled gear progression as it is.

 

To attack a poster for asking for a content addition that would add greater functionality to the game is poor form, sir.

 

The fact is: a dungeon finder makes the game more accessible to casual players. Casual players are the bread and butter of the mass market MMO. You may not like that, but it's the truth. To omit such a system when developing a mass market, casual centric MMO is a madness.

2 banana stickers for you Sir.

The thing is Bioware is clearly listening if you pay attention to the dev tracker or watched the newest little patch trailer

 

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/coming-star-wars-old-republic

 

it's cool, myself and many others will be back when the game is what we want it to be. no reason to get all dramatic omgzz

That video addresses nothing.

- He didn't mention Ilum.

- He didn't mention ability delay.

- He didn't mention FPS issues.

- He only specified one new warzone in the "coming months" when players have asked for more than one (which wouldn't be hard... they're small maps )

- He didn't mention a Dungeon Finder.

- He ONLY mentioned some VAGUE alterations to the UI that would allow for UI placement and scale alterations, and didn't speak to action bar placement (which is something a lot of people have complained about)

- He didn't mention PvP loot system changes.

So all in all... he didn't speak about anything at all. He just gave you fluff, and expects you to be happy with that.

Agree 100% - The Bioware fanboys that are being willfully ignorant and making excuses for them are only doing harm to the game. It's people like that the make Bioware think they are doing well when in fact they aren't.

 

 

 

I'm sick of people like you. Just because WoW has it doesn't mean it's a bad idea and Swtor should absolutely not do it. WoW has levels, want to remove those? WoW has chat, want to remove that too?

Exactly. There's a reason WoW still has ten million subscribers. I personally love the fallacious argument "WoW wasn't any better at launch!" As if that somehow salves the sting of the scam this Beta was. Yes, WoW was flawed when it was released....7 years ago when MMOs weren't nearly as mainstream and popular. Bioware had plenty of time to look around and take stock of the MMO scene; to see what MMOs did well and what they didn't. Instead, they just said, "Screw it. It's Star Wars, we'll get people with that." It's Lucas all over again. Hey, for 1.2 why don't you add Gungans as a playable race.

I'm a huge huge huge Star Wars fan. I still play West End Games' D6 RPG every week, but this? Hell no. I'd only subscribe again to have the satisfaction of unsubbing a second time and no amount of fanboy reverse QQing is going to change the fact that this is a really crappy MMO. Could have been a cool single player game.

As you'll all be aware, Bioware has been attempting some pretty ridiculous tactics of late in an effort to retain the dwindling and dying Level 50 end game player base. One thing that Bioware failed to realise when developing SWTOR was that the majority of its "hype" and lasting appeal would be built upon the comments and feedback coming out of level 50s at endgame and, again as we all know, these comments are most often NOT positive.

 

The sad fact is that Bioware has failed utterly in its efforts to create another blockbuster MMO. Whilst EA maintain that 1,000,000 subscribers would be the "sweet spot" for profitability, analysts are now trending EAs 2013 profits down by quite a margin. This isn't just because of the general failure by EA to take the fight to Activision, but largely due to SWTORs failure to live up to expectations.

 

It's also worth noting that EA shares have fallen amid concerns that SWTOR is failing.

 

 

 

So what can Bioware do to alleviate this problem?

 

The reality is that James Ohlen and company need to start LISTENING to their players. Flippant remarks about how they are doing just that aren't going to cut it if they wish to retain EAs favour (or conversely avoid EA shutting down Bioware Austin, which is inevitable if the current failure continues). It is unlikely that cheap tactics like dropping a patch before renewal day and/or offering Founder achievements for those who remain until March is going to sedate or please the players base.

 

Anything short of a total overhaul to the many end game systems that are broken - ideally before March - will inevitably result in further player decline.

 

Some things that I personally believe need to be solved in the next COUPLE OF WEEKS ;D:

 

1 - A dungeon finder needs to be added to allow easy access to flash points and hard modes.

2 - The UI needs a near-total overhaul. It's rubbish.

3 - End game story mode needs to be added as soon as is possible. People wish to continue their characters stories, and most find the idea of levelling alts a hinderance at best as some of the post-35 levelling content was just awful.

4 - More warzones need to be added. Launching with 3 warzones, one that pops constantly, was just unacceptable.

5 - Problems with Ilum persist, and Bioware are being lethargic in their dealings with them. Base camping is still a problem, and it would be ideal if bases were nothing more than launching platforms for the fight. (I have an idea: make it so that within a radius of X of each base, kills do not award you anything, and move the cannons into mid-field, between central and southern, and northern and central. In addition, add a buff that stacks with other valor buffs as a radial buff around control points. Also make a "planet wide" ops group that EVERY person who goes to Ilum is in by default)

5 - PvP loot distribution needs to be totally rethought. Apply a "band aid" to Battlemaster gear just doesn't cut it. Champion's Bags are a poor idea, and were always going to be a poor idea.

6 - SORT OUT THE FPS ISSUES, AND DON'T FOB US OFF WITH AN "IT'S ONLY 5% OF PLAYERS" RUBBISH EXCUSE. It's a prevalent issue that will drive players away, and you have to solve it or suffer for it.

7 - FIX THE ABILITY DELAY AS A PRIORITY. Seriously. This single issue will cost you a GREAT deal of players, and they AREN'T going to be willing to wait for you to "get round to it", regardless of how complicated you'd like us all to think it is. This should be your TOP priority on the systems side of things. You should be moving coders from other, non-critical projects onto this issue. It needs to be fixed.

 

These are just a few issues that I have with the game, but there are a plethora more waiting in the wings to come to the fore. People would like to believe that it ends here, that once these issues are solved the game will be amazing. The truth is that below these issues, there are a hundred more issues waiting to kick us in the teeth.

 

EA charged a premium price for SWTOR. They are asking me for £8.99 a month. If they want that, they really should consider working for that money. Bioware really should re-prioritise their plan of action with Star Wars, and start listening to what us players have to say. I'm not suggesting that I have the answers. Sadly however we do know what we DON'T like, and Bioware should be dealing with those issues first before adding in any content on top of that flawed foundation.

 

I personally am going to give you guys one more month. If by the end of February things aren't resolve, me and my guildies have already decided to unsubscribe. We can barely tolerate logging in now to run pathetic PvP sessions that end up punishing us for our time.

 

This post (outside of the start) is just my opinion of the game. I realise there is a group of people that think it's amazing. That means nothing to me. There was a group of people that thought Warhammer was amazing.. all 100k of them. Same goes for AoC... all 75k of them. SWTOR does not deserve to end up like that after the amount of effort Bioware claimed to be putting into it.

 

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

"As you'll all" ....stopped there.

Actually the functionality of transmogrify is already in the game in the way they have handled gear progression as it is.

Technically, it isn't. The modification system isn't half as flexible for players as transmogrify or the appearance tab. Under those systems, I can immediately equip a statistical upgrade while maintaining desired appearance. Modification requires me to slowly build up mods while passing on upgrades because I think they look terrible. Not to mention the hassle of finding modifiable gear you like in the first place. It's a terrible, poorly thought out system that is a marked step behind every other MMORPG and the devs should be ashamed of themselves.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Actually the functionality of transmogrify is already in the game in the way they have handled gear progression as it is.

 

To attack a poster for asking for a content addition that would add greater functionality to the game is poor form, sir.

 

The fact is: a dungeon finder makes the game more accessible to casual players. Casual players are the bread and butter of the mass market MMO. You may not like that, but it's the truth. To omit such a system when developing a mass market, casual centric MMO is a madness.

My problem is casuals whining when they can't find a group within 15 minutes, come to the forums demanding a LFG tool. Sure, it's more accessible, but that doesn't mean it's better.

Inb4 someone claiming but I have two kids to feed and a diper to change

The thing is Bioware is clearly listening if you pay attention to the dev tracker or watched the newest little patch trailer

 

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/coming-star-wars-old-republic

 

it's cool, myself and many others will be back when the game is what we want it to be. no reason to get all dramatic omgzz

Oh God. They kept the team that gave us this together? I was wrong, it won't be free to play in a year, its going to be shut down in a year.

"As you'll all" ....stopped there.

Edited for posterity.

It's 2.10am. I am tired. Forgive me.

That video addresses nothing.

 

- He didn't mention Ilum.

- He didn't mention ability delay.

- He didn't mention FPS issues.

- He only specified one new warzone in the "coming months" when players have asked for more than one (which wouldn't be hard... they're small maps )

- He didn't mention a Dungeon Finder.

- He ONLY mentioned some VAGUE alterations to the UI that would allow for UI placement and scale alterations, and didn't speak to action bar placement (which is something a lot of people have complained about)

- He didn't mention PvP loot system changes.

 

So all in all... he didn't speak about anything at all. He just gave you fluff, and expects you to be happy with that.

I think Ilum got fixed alreaddy? Not too sure about that. Ability delay and FPS issues are most likely not fixable right now. I am blaming the Hero Engine on that (I am sure many others have their own fun little conspiracy theories, that one is mine lol). Someone told me Bioware claimed they never intended or wanted to add in a dungeon finder, again, wish I had actual information on that.

Regardless, there are simply too many bugs and too many little missing functions for me right now. It's new and they are newbies, can't do much about it lol.

Dungeon finder should be their #1 priority. That exclusion alone can kill this game. It was a horrible omission.

funny how the whole ilum issue you bring up was fixed today, i swear you *** hats dont read the dev tracker, or patch notes, or anything for that matter

My problem is casuals whining when they can't find a group within 15 minutes, come to the forums demanding a LFG tool. Sure, it's more accessible, but that doesn't mean it's better.

 

Inb4 someone claiming but I have two kids to feed and a diper to change

Casuals and hardcores are clamering for this. I am a hardcore and I refuse to look for groups for FPs most times.

Technically, it isn't. The modification system isn't half as flexible for players as transmogrify or the appearance tab. Under those systems, I can immediately equip a statistical upgrade while maintaining desired appearance. Modification requires me to slowly build up mods while passing on upgrades because I think they look terrible. Not to mention the hassle of finding modifiable gear you like in the first place. It's a terrible, poorly thought out system that is a marked step behind every other MMORPG and the devs should be ashamed of themselves.

 

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Pull the mods out of upgrades

Pull the mods out of upgrades

Not all upgrades have mods. Thus the system fails.

My problem is casuals whining when they can't find a group within 15 minutes, come to the forums demanding a LFG tool. Sure, it's more accessible, but that doesn't mean it's better.

 

Inb4 someone claiming but I have two kids to feed and a diper to change

So wait...

What you're suggesting is that a system that makes it easier to find groups at end game, and thus opens up the game to a higher numbers of players, thus allowing more people to interact with that content might NOT be better than...

Standing around on the Imperial Fleet, spamming General, hoping and praying that (a) there's a tank around, (b) there's a healer around, © that your message doesn't get lost in with the rest of the spam and (4) that you're done by 11.30 as you have work in the morning.

I'm sorry, but even the fanboys must be reluctant to back you up on that one

What they should have done from the jump is make it less like WoW.

 

People who like the WoW playstyle are... (wait for it.)

 

 

 

 

Playing WoW!

 

 

Everything TOR has to offer has been done and in a lot of circumstances, done better by someone else (that includes BW's own single player games voice over/acting).

 

There is a huge disconnect between the KOTOR part of the game and the MMO style of the game.

 

the game as a whole seems very schizophrenic. Back during the early part of summer they had a build out that totally rocked. People loved it. There was a great mod system, classes felt "right" (especially jedis).

 

It felt familiar but different, even innovative in parts (mod system), but they kept making more and more changes to bring it in line with the WoW mentality.

 

It just doesn't gel.

 

Hopefully something will be done.

I agree with this - and the people who left WoW were probably hoping for something different - I know I was.

Not sure why the OP thinks so highly of the forum complainers and one article found on the net which has some analyst questioning "early game play". Tell me what the activisionblizzard stock price is at and how profitable that company has been over the last three years?

Apparently all those functions which are in WOW have made it so profitable...