I’m writing this post in an attempt to offer an argument for how I think that SWTOR can be improved to both offer a better gaming experience for players and provide a long-term subscriber base for the company to remain profitable.

 

Now I’m not going to pretend to be familiar with how they make money, but I am going to offer some of my thoughts about how a few other ideas can help improve whatever they’re currently doing.

 

 

1. Focus on the small minority of players that push the limits on end-game content. I know that sounds crazy right? We’re not the ones they make money off of right?

 

I think thats wrong and here’s why: remember when you were a low level character running around trying to find your way and somebody linked something in chat that made you say, “oh wow…I want one of those” – well that’s what the more ‘hardcore’ people offer your casual player clientele – goals.

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that obtaining better gear and making yourself better is a goal that virtually every gamer shares and if you want to keep those ‘hardcore’ people linking those items, you need to provide content at a rate that keeps them playing.

 

 

2. ALWAYS provide ways for people to improve their characters. That doesn’t mean that you have to roll out a raid zone every month but take a look at the Advanced Achievement (AA) system that Everquest 1 had. There were over 1,000 points that could be earned with extensive grinding but guess what, it kept people going.

 

Worried about balance issues? Ok, that’s a legitimate concern but I’m sure it can be figured out.

 

The point is that people always had a way to make their character better if they chose to spend the time on it. I’d rather have that option than what I have now that I’m almost fully Rakata geared….nothing. Just sit and wait.

 

That’s not a good strategy for keeping subscribers – and as I mentioned above, the ones you should want playing.

 

 

3. Create competition. Over 10 years ago, we had the ability to go on a game website, look up player-characters and see which tank had the most health or which dps did the most damage. It’s harmless competition but it keeps the more hardcore players going if they’re able to see how they stack up against other players.

 

Ok, so maybe 5% of your subscribers would use this tool but what do you have to lose by allowing it? Again, we’re the ones you should want playing.

 

 

4. Reconnect your staff with the people playing the game. There was a time in MMOs when the customer service folks or GMs, whatever you want to call them….they’d be in-game and available for players to interact with.

 

Ok, I can understand that you don’t want to spend a ton of money hiring people to handle customer complaints (though I think you should) but that’s a separate issue.

 

I can tell you that some of my most fond memories from past games were when a GM would host a world event and award titles or unique items. In Everquest, they’d invite 40 people to an arena and let them battle to the last man standing. It was creative and it was fun. It made all of us feel like we were a part of a community and more importantly, that the company that maintained the game was interested in interacting with us.

 

 

 

All of these changes are possible. If games more than 10 years ago offered them, they're possible. They'll certainly cost some money but I think the bigger issue is that they'll require a change in vision with regards to what's important for the players. I hope that this post is received as a hope for a stronger game and some ideas to get there rather than criticism.

 

Anyways, I’ll wrap up this lengthy post by saying that though I understand the way that these games have changed over the years and the profit is now coming from a new type of subscriber, I think a return to some of the ideas that were successful in the past would offer this game a brighter and lengthier future….and in the event that you really are only worried about money (which I don’t believe by the way), well you’ll make more money too.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

 

P.S. Just FYI, I never played WoW. Many of these ideas came from EQ1, long before WoW tried them. They've been successful before though is the point.

Edited February 20, 2012 by --Ramzes--

A lot of good points.

 

I'd like to add: Full control space combat and space PvP to the list.

 

why are all these post trying to fix the game walls of text...

why are all these post trying to fix the game walls of text...

 

beacuase, i dunno, all ideas arent three word sentences?

We've tried this approach already. I admire your calm reasoned take on criticism and feedback, but the community is so polarized, that it will devolve into more of the same.

Some good points here.

 

However, I would recommend removing number one. The people you're referring to that are linking this incredible gear would only be "inspiring" the new hardcores (still a minority).

 

To everyone else, you're just linking stuff they can either never have or stuff they could only get if they play the game in ways they hate. That won't encourage the masses. It'll discourage them.

 

"Look at this awesome piece of gear!"

 

"That looks sweet! How can I get that?"

 

"Only from hardcore raiding."

 

"But.. I hate raiding. Is there another way to get it?"

 

"No. Sheesh, stop being so entitled. This is RAID ONLY gear. You want it, learn to enjoy raiding."

 

"Well, what can I get by playing casually?"

 

"Look at what that level 50 casual is linking. That."

 

"Oh, cool. I like that too!"

 

Why on earth would catering to the minority so they can flaunt stuff the majority will never have create goals for that majority?

Edited February 20, 2012 by Vecke

Those points need to be addressed by the developer.

There is nothing much the players can do, apart from being patient and paying their monthly fees.

Me, I refuse to do that; paying, hoping for the best with no guarantees.

If it was free I would be in. But paying to help them fix their game or wait for them to fix their game.. I dont think so.

If it wasn't in wow you won't get it here. Its as simple as that. This company can't innovate to save their lives. And before someone claims their story crap is "innovation", its not.. its just biowares single player signature slapped into an online co op game with dying servers.

Keep the info coming beta testers without you our game might suck!

1. Focus on the small minority of players that push the limits on end-game content. I know that sounds crazy right? We’re not the ones they make money off of right?

 

I think that’s wrong and here’s why: remember when you were a low level character running around trying to find your way and somebody linked something in chat that made you say, “oh wow…I want one of those” – well that’s what the more ‘hardcore’ people offer your casual player clientele – goals.

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that obtaining better gear and making yourself better is a goal that virtually every gamer shares and if you want to keep those ‘hardcore’ people linking those items, you need to provide content at a rate that keeps them playing.

Sorry but this seems a little to self serving for me.

Fact hardcores do not provide casuals with goals, if anything they provide disillussionment. Because rather than providing us with "goals" it only goes to show what we will not achieve gear wise in a game. And disillusionment leads to cancelations

 

If you want BW to cater more for hardcores then by all means ask for it but dont pretend to hide behind casual players as means of pushing your own agenda.

 

 

2. ALWAYS provide ways for people to improve their characters. That doesn’t mean that you have to roll out a raid zone every month but take a look at the Advanced Achievent (AA) system that Everquest 1 had. There were over 1,000 points that could be earned with extensive grinding but guess what, it kept people going.

Agreed but this goes for solo content as well as group content

 

That’s not a good strategy for keeping subscribers – and as I mentioned above, the ones you should want playing.

These days raiders make up a tiny percentage of the playerbase and consume the greatest amount of content. If BW was to adhere to your suggestions then the bulk of the playing public would leave and you would no longer have a game to play.

 

 

3. Create competition. Over 10 years ago, we had the ability to go on a game website, look up player-characters and see which tank had the most health or which dps did the most damage. It’s harmless competition but it keeps the more hardcore players going if they’re able to see how they stack up against other players.

 

Ok, so maybe 5% of your subscribers would use this tool but what do you have to lose by allowing it? Again, we’re the ones you should want playing.

Again nothing could be further from the truth, "the ones you want playing" are the unwashed masses. There is far greater $$$ in the solo/casual market than there ever will be in the hardcaore raiding market. If thats the type of game you want go play EQ2

If it was free I would be in. But paying to help them fix their game or wait for them to fix their game.. I dont think so.

Well said.

I'm all for making the endgame hard. I'm not hardcore by any means but seeing the guys in really ****** gear made me want to be. I got there for a while but don't have the time for it now. Another thing I'd like to add, is maybe a daily/weekly/randomly timed invasion of the opposite factions base, or a capitol ship or something. Something pops up to defend or attack, do you accept, blah blah, have a whole bunch of people with NPCs to fill out the balance. Rogue like (random map generated) capitol ship with open areas and tight corridors, you die and your dead either laying there, or back to your faction's fleet/planet/wherever, and one or a couple of major players to kill/save. I'm going to shut up now. Edited February 20, 2012 by Taikaesine

Great post, OP. Some thoughts:

 

1 - I agree. The "aspirational" nature of progression gear kept me playing WoW for awhile. From a producer's viewpoint, though, this kind of thing is fairly meaningless. Problem is, you can't neatly place it in a spreadsheet or on a Power Point slide. I can guarantee you there are monthly reports generated at EA showing total subscribers, logins, playtime, content run, broken out by region and week. That's the kind of information they use when writing design specs & deciding on budgets. You & me feeling the urge to go after a carrot because of a link in /1 doesn't really register. We both know that feeling as players, but for producers it is not a metric they can track.

 

2 - This will just take time. I have a feeling the Legacy system will cover most of it, but it will take awhile to fully roll out (and then, hopefully, be continually improved upon).

 

3 - Given the sci fi setting, it'd be great if there were leader boards with this kind of information in game. Log on, go to fleet, and you can access information like who scored the most Huttballs in the last 24 hours, or what guilds downed what bosses this week, or who got the most commendations or MVP votes or whatever.

 

4 - The community is pretty ugly. I can't blame devs for staying away, out of fear of getting bus shocked, or worse. Besides which, EA has never been a warm & fuzzy kind of company that would do things like you describe. Which is a shame.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Dayfax

No thanks, this game is past saving.

I’m writing this post in an attempt to offer an argument for how I think that SWTOR can be improved to both offer a better gaming experience for players and provide a long-term subscriber base for the company to remain profitable.

 

Now I’m not going to pretend to be familiar with how they make money, but I am going to offer some of my thoughts about how a few other ideas can help improve whatever they’re currently doing.

 

 

1. Focus on the small minority of players that push the limits on end-game content. I know that sounds crazy right? We’re not the ones they make money off of right?

 

I think that’s wrong and here’s why: remember when you were a low level character running around trying to find your way and somebody linked something in chat that made you say, “oh wow…I want one of those” – well that’s what the more ‘hardcore’ people offer your casual player clientele – goals.

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that obtaining better gear and making yourself better is a goal that virtually every gamer shares and if you want to keep those ‘hardcore’ people linking those items, you need to provide content at a rate that keeps them playing.

 

 

2. ALWAYS provide ways for people to improve their characters. That doesn’t mean that you have to roll out a raid zone every month but take a look at the Advanced Achievent (AA) system that Everquest 1 had. There were over 1,000 points that could be earned with extensive grinding but guess what, it kept people going.

 

Worried about balance issues? Ok, that’s a legitimate concern but I’m sure it can be figured out.

 

The point is that people always had a way to make their character better if they chose to spend the time on it. I’d rather have that option than what I have now that I’m almost fully Rakata geared….nothing. Just sit and wait.

 

That’s not a good strategy for keeping subscribers – and as I mentioned above, the ones you should want playing.

 

 

3. Create competition. Over 10 years ago, we had the ability to go on a game website, look up player-characters and see which tank had the most health or which dps did the most damage. It’s harmless competition but it keeps the more hardcore players going if they’re able to see how they stack up against other players.

 

Ok, so maybe 5% of your subscribers would use this tool but what do you have to lose by allowing it? Again, we’re the ones you should want playing.

 

 

4. Reconnect your staff with the people playing the game. There was a time in MMOs when the customer service folks or GMs, whatever you want to call them….they’d be in-game and available for players to interact with.

 

Ok, I can understand that you don’t want to spend a ton of money hiring people to handle customer complaints (though I think you should) but that’s a separate issue.

 

I can tell you that some of my most fond memories from past games were when a GM would host a world event and award titles or unique items. In Everquest, they’d invite 40 people to an arena and let them battle to the last man standing. It was creative and it was fun. It made all of us feel like we were a part of a community and more importantly, that the company that maintained the game was interested in interacting with us.

 

 

 

All of these changes are possible. If games more than 10 years ago offered them, they're possible. They'll certainly cost some money but I think the bigger issue is that they'll require a change in vision with regards to what's important for the players. I hope that this post is received as a hope for a stronger game and some ideas to get there rather than criticism.

 

Anyways, I’ll wrap up this lengthy post by saying that though I understand the way that these games have changed over the years and the profit is now coming from a new type of subscriber, I think a return to some of the ideas that were successful in the past would offer this game a brighter and lengthier future….and in the event that you really are only worried about money (which I don’t believe by the way), well you’ll make more money too.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

i agreed with everything , especially the AA thing

if I want to change my Orange modable armor set for another modable set, I dont want it to cost a bajillion-gazzilion credits to pull the mods out, so I can put them in the new set.

 

that's what I want.

My related thread improving game experience from a specific pov..

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2969821#post2969821

Edited February 20, 2012 by Xorto

Baldour's Gate.. Loved it.. IceWindale Trilogy Loved it. Ahead of it's time.

SWOTR? Oh wait this is a Bioware game? or Sony?

I quit Galaxies back in 05 due to the NGE. Left it for WoW. I heard Bioware was going to make this game. Woot......

 

 

Purchased the "Collector's Edition" in anticipation. Played tested..

What a total let down!!!

 

 

Too much money waisted on Cinema.

 

Put the money into quality.. go look up six sigma.

Edited February 20, 2012 by VolarisF

I’m writing this post in an attempt to offer an argument for how I think that SWTOR can be improved to both offer a better gaming experience for players and provide a long-term subscriber base for the company to remain profitable.

 

Now I’m not going to pretend to be familiar with how they make money, but I am going to offer some of my thoughts about how a few other ideas can help improve whatever they’re currently doing.

 

 

1. Focus on the small minority of players that push the limits on end-game content. I know that sounds crazy right? We’re not the ones they make money off of right?

 

 

No. Absolutely no. I stopped reading here.

 

EDIT: while scrolling down I saw "create competition"

 

HELL no. I'm not here to compete.

Edited February 20, 2012 by VorpalK

Work together?

 

Everytime someone comes up with an idea to improve the game, people will insult them left and right. Why bother?

Sorry but this seems a little to self serving for me.

Fact hardcores do not provide casuals with goals, if anything they provide disillussionment. Because rather than providing us with "goals" it only goes to show what we will not achieve gear wise in a game. And disillusionment leads to cancelations

 

If you want BW to cater more for hardcores then by all means ask for it but dont pretend to hide behind casual players as means of pushing your own agenda.

 

Who says you will never achieve it? Maybe it will take you longer but so did getting to level 50. The hardcore players are what makes the game exciting, without it you would have (sorry have to say it, the buggy easy operations you have now). The hardcore players are the testers, they are the ones that will be the ones that will be able to find problems so that most of the players dont encounter any of those problems.

 

It also allows the devs to actually put in better content with less bugs. Its easier to work on one someone for a few people than it is for everyone. That might seem like its being selfish but its not. The devs would only have to worry about content for the elite hardcore players because everyone else still has content to do. When you have to make content for everyone then you dont have the time to do it right.

 

Agreed but this goes for solo content as well as group content

 

Yes it should but the group rewards should always be higher than any solo reward.

 

For the OP it doesnt just have to be to advance your chararter in say gear but they need to make sure everyone has something to do at all times so when they cant do the gear stuff they can still play and do something productive

 

These days raiders make up a tiny percentage of the playerbase and consume the greatest amount of content. If BW was to adhere to your suggestions then the bulk of the playing public would leave and you would no longer have a game to play.

 

You really think so? The truth is if you tell the players that they have to do it to get it then guess what they would do it. Look at WoW (again sorry have to say it). In vanilla not many got into AQ 40 or naxx but more were in the MC/BWL range where they had to succeed to get their rewards. The subs grew to 6 million abouts. The TBS same thing (to start) you had to succeed to get the reward. Then it all happened. Lets have lower level bosses drop tokens so you can get gear and lets lift attunements. Some attunements are bad but some are needed to keep all content current. WoW messed this up making it so you can skip naxx ulduar and toc and get into IIC when you hit max level. All this did was make all the other content basically useless and forgotten.

 

Again nothing could be further from the truth, "the ones you want playing" are the unwashed masses. There is far greater $$$ in the solo/casual market than there ever will be in the hardcaore raiding market. If thats the type of game you want go play EQ2

 

You want everyone playing. You kick out all the hardcore now then guess what a new set of hardcore will appear and they will leave and then sooner or later you wont have anyone. Hate to say it but in an MMO you need the rick poor and middle class.

 

 

As for other notes for the OP I actually agree with you (OMG did I just agree with people with some certain people? Lucky your on my friends list now )

 

The GM or whatever you call them should be playing the game. Actually everyone woeking on the game should have to spend 8 hours playing it a week. The games wants are alot different when you play then they are on a chalk board.

 

Forgot what else I was going to add but if they did this they would actually get more players. O I remeber what I was going to add. Stop copying everything wow does. Take some on the good things but make it its own game and not wowws (WoW with sabers).

Just making sure the fanboiz understand what he is saying in #1. Before they just agree or that I am reading it wrong. Edited February 20, 2012 by Emeda

/yawn. Same old same old...cater to the people who grind content rather than those who enjoy the creative/imaginative/social aspects of games that were originally mostly about those things.

 

I wish you people would just go play FPS or RTS games and stop taking everything but the hyper competitive aspects out of MMOs, that is all you want anyway...meanwhile people who actually enjoy the content that costs so much time and money are forced to sit in hubs and queue for "hard" content because some people who feel the need to play conqueror can't do it IRL so they hide in a game so that they can play violent.

 

God this story is so old...

The solution is to STOP LISTENING TO BAD PLAYERS. Period. The OP is right, build the game for the players who actually *gasp* enjoy playing the game and put in effort to be good at it. Then let Timmy the BAD sit there and be jealous. That's fine, that's how it's supposed to work. Timmy can have all his fantasies of personal revenge all he wants, about how he's going Here's a way to start: put out a dev post with the title "IF YOU SUCK WE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINIONS". The end. Haven't completed Nightmare modes? Your opinion on the game is invalid, move along.

 

I agree with you in spirit.

 

Problem is, all of the "bads" subsidize the development of the nightmare modes you want to clear.

 

EA didn't spent $200 million to make a game for a niche audience.