Rise of The Hutt Cartel: First Digital Expansion

[Repefe]

You have 0 evidence yourself. You and a lot of other people including myself have 0 idea what is their content plan. Why shouldn't they stretch this race if they can put more manhours into the "expansion"? MMO's are not like cars, where you could judge according to the speed/ design that the people behind are doing a good/ bad job (apart from the guys making decisions). How do you know that it's so easy with Hero engine to implement something like this? How do you know that it's not totally much easier with another game engine?

I hate to bring it up but they never said explicit that this "expansion" will be totally free. (They did the usual... "biggest content patch in MMO history"... "never said it would be for free"..... Bioware thingy). They also made the statement (which you are refering to) before they implemented F2P.

No hard evidence, but you can make observations. Maybe it's because of the unfortunate choice of engine, maybe because BW developers are incopetent, maybe because they are stretched too thin; regardless of the cause there seems to be a lot of stuff that is difficult for BW to do. And I think ppl could understand having to pay for the race if it was something iconic for SWTOR. Cathar is not it.

And content patch I have never heared of a paid content patch in a MMO before or rather I have never heared of a content patch that subscribers have to pay for. If content patches are not free for subscribers, what do you get for your subscription ? And it's false advertisement basically. You please your customers with promises of grand patches and then you change your mind and have them pay for it labeling it as a tiny expansion.

Regardless. I think the core of the issue is that it has been a long time since BW did any sort of fan service even for their paying customers. Their every move seems to be screaming we want more money from you. Not to mention the f2p/b2p combination in the game does not even make sense.

[katta]

Doubt they will ever go beyond the races that share the human form. :\

So true.

Can see it now. The next race will be another altered human form and then they will be we are adding more races in the CS and as long as they keep doing well we will add more.

There excuse will be. What you dont like the human formed aliens? we thought thats what you wanted since they were selling so well.

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 04:29 AM ----------

Maybe i'm misunderstanding the definition of lazyness.

You don't think they made those choices to save money? My beef is with the term lazy. I've been asking for more species and better customization since June 2011. I just can't imagine the word 'Lazy' being used correctly in this case. Please correct me though as I love to learn.

They did make that choice to save money. Why because they are lazy.

They would rather add a race that costs say 20,000 to add into the game that they are hoping most people will buy just because its new then to spend the 200,000 to make a race thats harder to put in and debug that in there estimates wouldnt sell much more.

In other words. $20,000 to add canthar for 150,000 people when 90,000 people will buy is much easier than $200,000 to add ithorians for 150,000 people when only 100,000 people will still buy it.

They are making all the decisions on profit from the amount of work needed. Not by what would improve the game. SO I guess its both lazyness and greed.

Think about it. Look at the new expansion. They list 2 things at the start. A new planet with a level increase to 55. With new things being added later.

Why later? Its so if they dont get enough preorders they can add something else. If that doesnt add the amount they want then they will add something else. ONCE they reach the number they were looking for they wont add anything else to the expansion.
They are too lazy to just put out everything they worked on in it so they dont have to do work later for new stuff if they can keep it out of the expansion.

BTW my definition of lazy is = Not doing something that should be done because its not worth the effort that you put into it.


SO in Bioware looking at making the biggest profit margin they can is being greedy but its also being lazy because they are notdoing whats should be done because its not worth it to them.

[Jamos77]

BTW my definition of lazy is = Not doing something that should be done because its not worth the effort that you put into it.

SO in Bioware looking at making the biggest profit margin they can is being greedy but its also being lazy because they are notdoing whats should be done because its not worth it to them.

I understand what you're saying and I too am disappointed at the choice of species BW gave us. However you can't invent your own definition of words or we'll be here all day discussing nonsense. BW developers are not lazy simply because you choose to change the meaning of the word.

[Psychlon]

BTW my definition of lazy is = Not doing something that should be done because its not worth the effort that you put into it.


SO in Bioware looking at making the biggest profit margin they can is being greedy but its also being lazy because they are notdoing whats should be done because its not worth it to them.

From a buisness point of view your argument is laughable (no offence). Doing something which is not profitable is being generous, nothing else. How long do you thinkt he game would run if Bioware would add costly items which are only preferable for a small amount of players?

I still hope they are in the transition period and we'll see more frequent/ more containing updates in the future.

[Redblade]

I still hope they are in the transition period and we'll see more frequent/ more containing updates in the future.

Don't hold your breath for it, I find it amazing that anyone has any faith left in BW/EA at this point.

[katta]

I understand what you're saying and I too am disappointed at the choice of species BW gave us. However you can't invent your own definition of words or we'll be here all day discussing nonsense. BW developers are not lazy simply because you choose to change the meaning of the word.

They are lazy and its not because I changed the definition of lazy to mean something else.

The definition of lazy = 1.averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
2.slow-moving; sluggish

How Bioware is lazy.

1. They make up excuses not to do something just to avoid doing the work.

2. Let me just say SOON. I think that fits the second definition to a T.

Again I am not making up the definition of lazy to match it with Bioware. You are just not wanting to use the definitions of lazy that match Bioware as examples.

[Jamos77]

They are lazy and its not because I changed the definition of lazy to mean something else.

The definition of lazy = 1.averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
2.slow-moving; sluggish

How Bioware is lazy.

1. They make up excuses not to do something just to avoid doing the work.

2. Let me just say SOON. I think that fits the second definition to a T.

Again I am not making up the definition of lazy to match it with Bioware. You are just not wanting to use the definitions of lazy that match Bioware as examples.

1) Now you're using the correct form of lazy but squeezing in BW anyway you can. They make up excuses 'just to avoid doing the work'????? If that's what you really believe then so be it.

2) Now I know i've lost you. Using the word 'soon' in reply to when something is ready...that now is 'lazy'? You're teaching me a new english I never knew.

As I predicted, if we change the meaning of words we'll be discussing nonsense (and I think we've started doing so already).

You're entitled to your opinion, I'm just not sure I follow.

EDIT: English isn't my first language either so I'm not trying to belittle you.

[katta]

From a buisness point of view your argument is laughable (no offence). Doing something which is not profitable is being generous, nothing else. How long do you thinkt he game would run if Bioware would add costly items which are only preferable for a small amount of players?

I still hope they are in the transition period and we'll see more frequent/ more containing updates in the future.

Who cares about the business point of view. You and anyone that plays this game should only care about the gaming aspect and not care about the business part of it at all. If they had a good product they would be making a boat load of money. Just think with that enormous staff they had at launch (that they didnt plan on reducing) and could have been supported by 500,000 subs and still make a profit. They had 2 million subs so that would be 3x their total cost as addition profit.

I am also saying that they shouldnt care about making money. I am saying that they are taking the easy way out because the other way would be too much work for the amount of effort they would have to put into it for the money it would make them (on that single item). They dont even want to try and do it, they would rather make up excuses.

If they stopped worrying about min/maxing profit before they even actual do something and instead do whats better for the game that it would actually make them more money.

[Jalek]

They are lazy and its not because I changed the definition of lazy to mean something else.

The definition of lazy = 1.averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.
2.slow-moving; sluggish

How Bioware is lazy.

1. They make up excuses not to do something just to avoid doing the work.

2. Let me just say SOON. I think that fits the second definition to a T.

Again I am not making up the definition of lazy to match it with Bioware. You are just not wanting to use the definitions of lazy that match Bioware as examples.

Because Bioware are the only MMO developer that use SOON...perhaps some things take time to develop and test

[katta]

1) Now you're using the correct form of lazy but squeezing in BW anyway you can. They make up excuses 'just to avoid doing the work'????? If that's what you really believe then so be it.

2) Now I know i've lost you. Using the word 'soon' in reply to when something is ready...that now is 'lazy'? You're teaching me a new english I never knew.

As I predicted, if we change the meaning of words we'll be discussing nonsense (and I think we've started doing so already).

You're entitled to your opinion, I'm just not sure I follow.

EDIT: English isn't my first language either so I'm not trying to belittle you.

1. How many games have alien forms that say clippings would be an issue with? So why can they do it but SWTOR cant? Its because they are too lazy to put forth the effort to do the work to make it work correctly.

2. Really? The reason they say soon is because they are lazy and dont want to put in a deadline that would need to be met or extended.

How about the SSSP. Its been over a year and nothing about it at all. I dont count the well i played it and its awsome garbage given by the devs either as them having something. If they can play it and know its awesome then they can atleast give a small tease of it so people would know it existed. Instead they dont give any date or deadline so its slow moving (if actual moving at all).

Just look at it this way.

You ask Joe the mechanic when hes going fix your car. He replies soon. Then 1 month later you ask him again and he still says soon. Then you ask him why hes not fixing it yet and hes saying that taking the motor out in that type of car is so complicated and wouls take alot of effort.

Honestly would you consider Joe lazy?

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 06:20 AM ----------

Because Bioware are the only MMO developer that use SOON...perhaps some things take time to develop and test

Perhaps some things do take time to develop and test, perhaps some are also just lazy and dont want to do the work and instead just say SOON. Then 3 months later say its still SOON. Then when asked again its still SOON but believe me your gonna love it.

[thevoicefromwithin]

Interesting direction this thread took. Interesting logic too.

Without any reasonable doubt this is one of the most expensive and ambitious titles in videogame history. People claim it was bad at launch, unfinished. So throwing money at it didn't help. Vox populi: money != quality.

Now Bioware/EA are obviously in cost-cutting mode. And before we know anything about the quality of upcoming content, people deduct it can only be bad. Because the producers of said content are lazy. Lack skills. Lack foresight. Don't care. Vox populi: lack of money = lack of quality.

Amazing.

On an absolutely not unrelated note, I'd love to see the age and eduction of people who claim they know better how to run a business than billion dollar businesses do. To put things in perspective. And entertain me.

[Zokonorb]

Just in case you aren't a designer who actually would know what he's talking about, this is just your opinion.... not a fact.

Example.... each companion has X amount of animations for the class it is playing. A full fledge playable race needs to have all animations for all classes. That's just one thing I could think off why it's not just a "pressing the button and voila... a new race is born".

Strange how your average joe can make new skins to minecraft characters but a professional game developer have a hard time creating a new race (skin) that's already in game. Really strange isn't it? There's no reasonable doubt about the fact that this is a pretty damn easy thing to do.

As for your animations "argument", it doesn't fucking matter, it doesn't matter if cathar companions previously only did trooper/crack whore/sith warrior animations, it's only a goddamn skin. Animations play no part in this, they don't have to add new animations to cathar, they just make a skin that's already ingame available to players.

They only need to change the character creation options and possibly create some minor customization options.

Now if by some magical means their butchered heroengine makes this an extremely complicated, then that's not an excuse either because it's just placing the financial burden that's a result of their own incompetence on the players. And why should players be ok with that?

[Mongoose19]

From a buisness point of view your argument is laughable (no offence). Doing something which is not profitable is being generous, nothing else. How long do you thinkt he game would run if Bioware would add costly items which are only preferable for a small amount of players?

I still hope they are in the transition period and we'll see more frequent/ more containing updates in the future.

Mr businessman here doesn't know about long term vs short term I see. This type of thinking you present is one of the reason we are in such financial crisis. SHORT TERM I need profit NOW leads to nothing but problems in the future.

[Bardarian]

Just in case you aren't a designer who actually would know what he's talking about, this is just your opinion.... not a fact.

Example.... each companion has X amount of animations for the class it is playing. A full fledge playable race needs to have all animations for all classes. That's just one thing I could think off why it's not just a "pressing the button and voila... a new race is born".

Why do you insist on thinking that the animations are tied to the mesh? They aren't. They haven't been since super nintendo.

[Psychlon]

Don't hold your breath for it, I find it amazing that anyone has any faith left in BW/EA at this point.

I like playing swtor but it's not such a big part of my life that I would need to put any "higher hopes" behind that statement. I hope for me and for them that they can turn it around. It's not like I'm waiting/ chanting/ praying for them to make the game better. If they can, good for me and good for them. If they can't, bad for them.

Who cares about the business point of view. You and anyone that plays this game should only care about the gaming aspect and not care about the business part of it at all. If they had a good product they would be making a boat load of money. Just think with that enormous staff they had at launch (that they didnt plan on reducing) and could have been supported by 500,000 subs and still make a profit. They had 2 million subs so that would be 3x their total cost as addition profit.

I am also saying that they shouldnt care about making money. I am saying that they are taking the easy way out because the other way would be too much work for the amount of effort they would have to put into it for the money it would make them (on that single item). They dont even want to try and do it, they would rather make up excuses.

If they stopped worrying about min/maxing profit before they even actual do something and instead do whats better for the game that it would actually make them more money.

Sorry but it doesn't make any sense to say, bringing something non-profitable into the game would actually turn out to be a profit. If it would be a profit, it would be profitable from the beginning. I'm talking from a business point of view not because I should care about their point but because I'm trying to understand why they are doing what they are doing.

1. How many games have alien forms that say clippings would be an issue with? So why can they do it but SWTOR cant? Its because they are too lazy to put forth the effort to do the work to make it work correctly.

2. Really? The reason they say soon is because they are lazy and dont want to put in a deadline that would need to be met or extended.

How about the SSSP. Its been over a year and nothing about it at all. I dont count the well i played it and its awsome garbage given by the devs either as them having something. If they can play it and know its awesome then they can atleast give a small tease of it so people would know it existed. Instead they dont give any date or deadline so its slow moving (if actual moving at all).

Just look at it this way.

You ask Joe the mechanic when hes going fix your car. He replies soon. Then 1 month later you ask him again and he still says soon. Then you ask him why hes not fixing it yet and hes saying that taking the motor out in that type of car is so complicated and wouls take alot of effort.

Honestly would you consider Joe lazy?

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 06:20 AM ----------



Perhaps some things do take time to develop and test, perhaps some are also just lazy and dont want to do the work and instead just say SOON. Then 3 months later say its still SOON. Then when asked again its still SOON but believe me your gonna love it.

Joe the mechnaic has fixed another 50 cars in the time it took you to ask him how is the status and the only reason you get the answer after over a month is because you didn't ask him after some days instead.

You are claiming that anyone at Bioware comes at 2pm and leaves at 3pm, only on maintenance days as they are so stupid that they need the whole crew to do it.

SOE didn't add new races for a very very long time because they had individual models for different races which made the implementation process for new armor very difficult and expensive. Introducing a new race would also mean to take all the existing armor models and redesign them so they'd match the new model. Eventually they wanted to change the model for all chars to a more simplistic base to have an easier time to implement new armor. Only because the benefit of being more flexible allowed it to them to actually do it (as they were talking about it for years!).

I have to deal on a daily basis with the same problem. People are coming to me, asking me something very "simple", however most of the time it turns out that there are much more things to it than what they initially thought which means you have to go to a longer process, meetings only to make a very simple thing and people like you, which have no insight in all the process, will call anyone working on it "lazy" which I don't think is really fair.

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 04:21 PM ----------

Strange how your average joe can make new skins to minecraft characters but a professional game developer have a hard time creating a new race (skin) that's already in game. Really strange isn't it? There's no reasonable doubt about the fact that this is a pretty damn easy thing to do.

As for your animations "argument", it doesn't fucking matter, it doesn't matter if cathar companions previously only did trooper/crack whore/sith warrior animations, it's only a goddamn skin. Animations play no part in this, they don't have to add new animations to cathar, they just make a skin that's already ingame available to players.

They only need to change the character creation options and possibly create some minor customization options.

Now if by some magical means their butchered heroengine makes this an extremely complicated, then that's not an excuse either because it's just placing the financial burden that's a result of their own incompetence on the players. And why should players be ok with that?

Why do you insist on thinking that the animations are tied to the mesh? They aren't. They haven't been since super nintendo.

Guys, come up with a reasonable explanation why a company which wants your money so desperately isn't throwing races every second at your face? They ad reskinned weapons/ speeder etc. all the time, why we don't have the same for races? I have no idea why it takes them so long, I even mentioned that I think for a simple race (no matter what problems they might have) it takes waaaay to long to be implemented.

All the talking about them being lazy/ stupid... if they want your money and just have to press a button to make more... there is no explantion as to why they wouldn't do it because "stupid" would be not to do it.

Mr businessman here doesn't know about long term vs short term I see. This type of thinking you present is one of the reason we are in such financial crisis. SHORT TERM I need profit NOW leads to nothing but problems in the future.

Not sure where you are coming from but there is no feasible reason to add an expensive feature if it appeals only a small crowd. See it as you won't, this has nothing to do with "longterm" success. You need to have a steady input of features a lot of people are interested about before you start adding niche features.

[Bardarian]

Guys, come up with a reasonable explanation why a company which wants your money so desperately isn't throwing races every second at your face? They ad reskinned weapons/ speeder etc. all the time, why we don't have the same for races? I have no idea why it takes them so long, I even mentioned that I think for a simple race (no matter what problems they might have) it takes waaaay to long to be implemented.

Do you wanna know the most likely reason?
The first issues is that they probably only have about 5 cathar hair cuts in game, maybe 4 faces for male and female, and no additional things like scars or earrings. Now, this would be pretty easy to fix. You would just have to have a team invest some time into it. I doubt that this is whats really blocking them but its possible that they are just taking forever coming up with 30 hair cuts ect.
The second issue is what I think the problem is. They have to adjust their UI for character creation. Now, its possible that they didn't anticipate adding races when they were building the engine / character creation UI and they might have made it almost impossible to adjust. This is almost exactly what happened to WoW and their character models. People have been asking for humans, orcs, trolls, ect (vanilla models) to be updated to high definition textures, more intricate animations ect ect ect. However, when they created WoW they did not think they would have to go back and do that. So there are very serious technical issues with doing it. Its been "leaked" / speculated that in order to really "fix" the old races they would have to create a new set of old races, purge the accounts of ALL old race characters, and reconstruct their achievements and items and give them to a new replacement character of a new "old race"

[Argroth]

Who cares about the business point of view. You and anyone that plays this game should only care about the gaming aspect and not care about the business part of it at all.

Thats what I don't get about people defending the game.

Looking at things specifically from a business point of view only opposes the players. Some people will twist and turn that and pretend more profits = better stuff for us but that is not fact they have to make that choice to put those profits back into the game. Bioware clearly is not putting that effort back into the game. Cartel packs are not effort yet that is what they seem to be focusing on.

It's like people like psychlon gladly bend over because it's what swtor asks them to do. Bioware: "bend over and give us your wallet" Psychlon "You are getting money so anything you say boss"

I also really don't understand how Jamos is not seeing how Bioware/swtor is the definition of lazy. Cathar is a reskin of the model that is already in place, they choose some colors some facial fur (no worse then Sith pureblood face structures) then slap it on the player model they use for every race then call it a day.

---------- Post added 2013-01-22 at 06:37 PM ----------

Why do you insist on thinking that the animations are tied to the mesh? They aren't. They haven't been since super nintendo.

Everyone defending Bioware dosn't seem to get that. They seem to think it is some immense undertaking.

I've done the same thing for Sims 2 characters, make totally new meshes. I have and I wasn't being paid for it and it didn't take me more then a month. One person, without much programming experience, as opposed to their team of "professionals".

This new character mesh could do every single thing all the other sim characters can do, pick up phones, swim in pools, wear different clothes (which I seperately meshed, not to fit the character but just to look different), drive cars, take out garbage, go to the bathroom etc etc.

but apparently for bioware this is just too much of a brain buster.

[Kittyvicious]

Thats what I don't get about people defending the game.

They want us to show them proof of our doctorate in 3D Modeling before we are allowed to state the obvious with common sense. Instead of admitting that all the humanoid models in SWTOR are the same 4 shapes and reskins, that putting an animal face (which they already have in the game several places) takes all sorts of techno mojo to create, and that somehow new animations must be given for this...even though animations are tied to the class.

Ok, here's my evidence. I studied 3DStudio Max in high school. This was a looooong time ago. At that beginner level, with little knowledge, before all the awesome technology we have now, I created bipedal models and animated them. I could use the same file to create 20 different skinned models with the same animation if I wanted. All I do is reskin the entire file, which takes almost no time other than to create the skin, and then it's done.

Now to the few that disagree, please tell me how this is magically different in 2013 with highly skilled professionals...right. Common sense.

[Jamos77]

I also really don't understand how Jamos is not seeing how Bioware/swtor is the definition of lazy. Cathar is a reskin of the model that is already in place, they choose some colors some facial fur (no worse then Sith pureblood face structures) then slap it on the player model they use for every race then call it a day.

I guess it's because I don't believe you're using the word 'lazy' right at all.

Cathar was the logical choice for a 1st extra species imo (would have prefered Wookiee myself). I'm happy to confess that like everyone else here I have absolutely no clue how BW judge 'ease' or 'cost' in creating a species. However at first glance it does seem like the cheapest choice.

Again though, selecting the cheapest realistic choice is not the same as being lazy.

I'm not defending BW but instead am asking you not to equate lazyness with cost efficiency.

[Mcstunner]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...00#post5739500 i'd say it's safe to say non-basic speaking races will NOT happen. i would love trandoshans, but alas. it's too hard QQ. also... george lucas apparently had a problem with wookiees being jedi or sith. idk, just saw it stated in a thread somewhere.