One Month Follow Up

[Kelimbror]

Well, my brief return to SWTOR has come to a quick end. This isn't a leaving post, or a complain thread, but the experience has provided some unique insight. The business model of this game played no part in the following observations.

I am very hard pressed to get attached to MMOs these days. Some people might call it fickle, or fairweather, or whatever...but they would all be wrong. SWTOR is a solid game. It is fun, I love the aesthetic and the characters, I love the story. I have many, many things I feel left undone and that is part of the problem.

SWTOR doesn't have nearly as many activities as several other MMOs. A hardcore SWTOR player probably feels they aren't getting enough, but that's not really the issue. What is wrong with SWTOR, is what is wrong with me, is what is wrong (or possibly right) with the genre as a whole. It really highlights why subscription models aren't going to work for much longer and also why F2P games are both making the genre better than ever, while more than likely slowly destroying it.

The bottom line is that there are so many games out there. Just in MMOs, there are far too many with more coming every year. In the past, these MMOs would die off to the WoW juggernaut and everything would return to normal. With the F2P revolution, however, there are so many games at your fingertips and all of them are much better quality than they used to be.

And that's really the entire problem. While some people are certainly die hard into one game, the average person is starting to be pulled across every game. Each time I get back into a game, it feels like I am going to be with it for a good amount of time. Honestly it seems like 3 weeks is the expiration date for me. That's enough time to see what is new, make enough progress on my main, and get sufficiently distracted by the idea to play something else.

Now the expiration date for people will be different, but the principle is the same. If you are unhappy with something, there are several other games immediately available. If you start up another game at any point, the idea of wanting to make progress in a different game is always in your mind. To that end, there's not much any game is going to be able to do to captivate people for a long enough amount of time.

It doesn't really matter what SWTORs F2P model is, people aren't going to come flocking to it. And by direct result, these companies have to make money. A lot of that means heavy investment into cash shops and alternate revenue. You can see it with WoW right now too. I don't know how I feel about this, but something tells me I need to start going back to my old ways of playing one game and looking nowhere else.

Where that place is, I have no idea. I just know it isn't SWTOR for this month. Anyone feel similarly?

[WarpedAcorn]

I cancelled my SWTOR sub a few weeks ago. Quite frankly, I keep running the exact same cycle in the game: Roll a new character (sometimes a class I already have), have tons of fun, enjoy Class AND Planet story arcs, PvP my eyeballs out, hit 55, PvP some more, get better gear and realize with bolster that the increase in marginal, get frustrated with OP healers @ 55, play another character in the 31-54 Bracket.

For me, PvP is the core enjoyment of my gameplay. All of the PvE content is great to do on the side, but without good PvP then I lose interest. The problem is that 55 PvP is not fun to me at all in the slightest. Largely this is due to the way that healers scale with 55 gear. If I could have level froze at 54, I would have. I played my Marauder so much that I went from 0 Warzone Commendations to Maxing Warzone and Ranked Warzone Comms and just burning the rest on Stims. It was a very enjoyable experience. Unfortunately when 55 rolls around...not so much. I don't want to point the finger solely at Bolster or Healers, but I think those are the biggest offenders.

Right now I don't know what I want to head into next. I'll probably start putting more time into LoL again.

[Kelimbror]

*snip*

It's interesting though how we play differently, but have similar results. I follow a pretty standard cycle myself. I dabble in an alt, get sucked back into the game, get on my main to do dailies, make credits, and make progress on gear. This last time I thought for sure that achievements (which were an awesome addition) and the new activities would keep me hooked. Unfortunately it just didn't, though I liked the content.

Whether it's from frustration or otherwise, it's all too easy to go somewhere else for a while. It's sort of sad, yet sort of awesome. SWTOR may have been the last big shot at keeping subscriptions and thus commitment to one MMO. It really had more buzz and more subscribers for the first 6 months than any other MMO did. I think the MMO genre would have looked much different had it hooked those 1-2 million people and kept them.

Right after SWTOR went F2P, the rest of the market holding out seemed to follow. So with that transition, the doors were blown wide open. I have always been on the side of choice and F2P games, but it seems harder to get fulfillment via completion and investment than it ever used to be. Things were definitely simpler, though most people argue worse, when we had sub only games.

It's no surprise that every time I feel like this, I start playing WoW again.

[Parrin]

All things to all people as an approach is pretty much a death sentence in any industry. Unfortunately, Star Wars fans include every possible type of person out there. Some of us want to be flying around in their freighter in the next AAA space simulation. Others want a first person shooter for their smuggler/agent/bounty hunter/trooper. Some of us want a WoW clone in space with every single aspect that made WoW great (in Wrath ). Others want anything but an MMO. Some of us just want chat bubbles and pazaak.

SWTOR didn't manage any of these, except for a stripped down version of WoW. Which didn't satisfy anyone except the cross section of MMO fans and die-hard Star Wars fans. If EA wants to capture the hearts of Star Wars fans, they will be needing more than one massive game. We know EA is not big on listening to their customers. But past history shows that they are really good at learning from their mistakes. We'll see how it goes.

I will say that the double XP weekend was probably the best thing that has ever been done in an MMO. If you were a subscriber, you could skip any repeat content just by buying the legacy bonus experience, and then playing through all the flashpoints and a few warzones. It was amazing to see the stories that I'd missed. Still waiting on another weekend to play through the smuggler story.

[Kelimbror]

I will say that the double XP weekend was probably the best thing that has ever been done in an MMO.

I agree, for a lot of reasons. I think I picked the game back up because I got the itch and it was a double xp weekend. It made the game flow much better, which forced me into the restriction wall, which then led me to sub for one month and buy RotHC. By all accounts, they completely succeeded where they should have failed: getting my money.

So they clearly can do some good things, but that's really what I'm on about. These games are now tasked with the need to bring in people, whether temporarily or permanently, in order to inject some life and revenue into the games. It doesn't feel like games are made to hold a lot of people for a long time, or even hold a lot of people for a short time, but to hold as many people as possible for any amount of time.

I'm not sure that this translates to good development, but maybe it will. SWTOR did it with double xp weekends while GW2 does it with bombarding the game with events and content. Both are enjoyable as a player, but it's starting to feel like no game will have all the pieces to keep that up constantly. And to be honest, I think I'm starting to go to the end of the spectrum where that is what I want.

It's hard enough to find time for MMOs after Steam sales, as I still have tons of games that I want to play and haven't beaten. I think the dedicated, completionist gamer personality is starting to come out again. And unfortunately, not a lot of games provide compelling reason to play them that way.

[Parrin]

It's hard enough to find time for MMOs after Steam sales, as I still have tons of games that I want to play and haven't beaten. I think the dedicated, completionist gamer personality is starting to come out again. And unfortunately, not a lot of games provide compelling reason to play them that way.

No doubt. I'm still playing Torchlight 2 on my first character. People are telling me that I should have finished it about 3-4 times over by now. But I'm still playing SWTOR and several other Steam games. Haven't owned a console for 20 years, so I am going crazy trying to figure out Tomb Raider, Transformers, and Witcher 2 on a keyboard and mouse. (I'm actually getting mocked by my dad who bought a controller last week to play a game I bought him. *sigh*) So, I'll need to invest a little more for a PC controller to enjoy those. This means I'll be dropping my own subscription for a few months, probably in the fall, just to avoid wasting the money while I play through those games. It's a great problem to have, but still...

[davispunx]

I unsubbed about 3 weeks ago. Had a been subbed since early release. I liked this game alot and wanted to support it as long as I could. However, I think the value of sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing a video game is becoming less and less for me. So if a game isn't spectacular then its just not going to capture my attention.

[Valeron]

It's hard enough to find time for MMOs after Steam sales, as I still have tons of games that I want to play and haven't beaten. I think the dedicated, completionist gamer personality is starting to come out again. And unfortunately, not a lot of games provide compelling reason to play them that way.

Heh, tell me about it. I've only been playing one mmo consistently and even that one it is for short periods of time. I have so many games that I have barely started and want to finish and others in which I would like to complete. And for me, all of those games have far greater gameplay than any mmo can offer. So even though I enjoy parts of mmos like SWTOR, they just don't have the hold on me like they did five years ago.

[Kelimbror]

So, I'll need to invest a little more for a PC controller to enjoy those.

I do recommend it for a lot of Steam games, but I've found RPG's to be better with a keyboard+mouse.

It's a great problem to have, but still...

Exactly...it's odd because it seems like it's both made the market for MMOs and games as a whole more diverse, in some instances much higher quality, but yet everything is diminished by not being able to shine among the throng of other games.

So if a game isn't spectacular then its just not going to capture my attention.

And this speaks to exactly what I mean. There's really only a handful of ways a game can make you play it consistently, which used to be the goal of MMOs(now I'm not so sure). People typically play the one they are the most attached to, which is almost always WoW or they play the one that really, really gets them.

It seems no matter how promising a game is, the potential of really getting someone has vanished because of the same reason the genre has gotten so much better in the first place: variety. In this case, it's just too much variety. The weirdest part is that we won't be able to go into the next phase of gaming until most of these games die off. I don't really see MMOs as being a permanent shift in gaming. I think it's going to go through waxing and waning, but unfortunately we will never get the time to completely cleanse our palates as F2P virtually guarantees games will not go away anymore.

It all sounds great, but when you think about it...not so much.

- - - Updated - - -

So even though I enjoy parts of mmos like SWTOR, they just don't have the hold on me like they did five years ago.

Exactly. Before there were so many games we were thrilled to keep doing some of the same activities. Now we've moved into a time where all genres of games can provide more than that, but MMOs b/cof design and budgets can't have that. So while it's ok to have 10 different non MMOs, because you can play them all to make constant progress and reach a definitive end, MMO's are never ending.

In that respect, you sometimes start to beging a never ending climb only to realize it's not as rewarding as you want it to be. So even if you enjoy the hike, you just shake your head and go to another hill.

[WarpedAcorn]

It's no surprise that every time I feel like this, I start playing WoW again.

This is where we disagree. I can't see myself ever going back to WoW. I looked at some Arena footage the other day and the graphic style just grated on me more than anything. Its one of the reasons I'm REALLY apprehensive about Wildstar. Having aesthetics that the player likes is crucial. SWTOR had that for me, especially once Adaptive Armor allowed me to wear pants instead of skirts! The other thing SWTOR has going for it is the damage-to-attack animation sync, which is something that is very visually pleasing to me and can completely turn me off of a game (I.E. Rift). There is just so much I fundamentally like about SWTOR, I'll probably be back within a month or two rolling a new character. >_>;;

[Deleted]

If I still didn't have the same grp of friends playing TOR I too would be gone. Not automatically to another MMO however. MMO's take investing in and tbh no MMO out there piques my curiosity. I'd rather spend the time saved (from dropping TOR) to play Total War Rome II (multiplayer) than dabble in other MMO's. Luckily my 10 weekly hours of TOR are enough for me mainly due to the friends that still play. Should they leave then I'd go FTP in a heartbeat or simply leave.

I could have stayed with SWG til the end of time but TOR, for me, was always going to result in me leaving long before the game shuts down. I do still enjoy the game obviously but it's too shallow for me to see myself continuing on into 2014. We'll see what the next few patches bring I guess.

[Revik]

I tend to think of it as a maturity of taste. Many people including myself which got into MMO's during the explosion that is WoW came in enjoying everything much like a kid who is happy with a bowl of sugar. As our tastes matured we became more discriminate liking certain things while hating others.

Now we are at a point where we are so keenly aware of our likes and dislikes and it is rare when an MMO can actually hit all those points while avoiding all those things we dislike.

I also find it hard getting into an MMO like I used to and now I tend to go from game to game playing the things I like about it while avoiding the other things I find inferior. Currently I am playing WoW for PvE and other filler activities like pet battles, I play SWTOR for MMO PvP and RPG story, Street Fighter 4 for hard core PvP, etc. I equate this to going to specific restaurants that you go for specific foods you like. No restaurant has everything you like anymore so you hop from one to another for which ever suites your fancy for that time.

IMO this is the way MMO's are currently heading. You are going to have multitudes of MMO's with different niche things about them and you are going to have people popping in when they want that particular brand of entertainment your MMO provides. I don't think we are ever going to have that one singular MMO with a one size fits all any more.

[Razael]

I still am playing SWTOR one month later from coming back, and i'm not going anywhere soon. I'm determined to see the Bounty Hunter and Sith Warrior stories, after getting both my Agent and Inquisitor to 55. After that it all depends on the content they deliver. I'm liking their summer schedule ALOT.
And i agree with the MMOs thing. I'm basically only playing SWTOR as a MMO, not 2 weeks ago i had Firefall, Defiance, GW2, TSW and Rift installed aswell. I deleted all those, i no longer have time to invest in so many MMOs. Plus theres steam? Can you believe i sinked yet another 30 hours + on FF7 even tho i've beaten it like 3 times already? After so many years playing MMOs , i find myself less and less interested in them, when theres so many great single player experiences that i can do at my own pace without worrying about not being up to date with the game.
I still have Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders 2 to beat, plus im interested in picking up Shadowrun Returns and Kingdoms of Amalur at some point. So basically its SWTOR + a couple Single player games. Until my interest in SWTOR dwindles, i likely won't play any other MMO.

[Kelimbror]

I don't think we are ever going to have that one singular MMO with a one size fits all any more.

I don't either. I mean WoW and Certainly Wildstar are aiming to do that, but whether they can reverse time and succeed in it is beyond me. It's not looking likely. It's kinda like finding out Santa isn't real and then you don't get extra presents anymore.

[Lemmiwink]

I guess TESO might be a one size fits all MMO tbh. It could all be hype, but the universe/dev/ambitions are promising.

[Revik]

I guess TESO might be a one size fits all MMO tbh. It could all be hype, but the universe/dev/ambitions are promising.

And it might very well be so for you but what I was trying to get at is that you are not going to have a singular MMO which will satisfy everyone for all things. One game you might have an excellent crafting system. Another you have a lively RP community in another you have a great combat system.

TESO might hit home on multiple facets maybe but it is unlikely that we will have an all encompassing MMO that gets everything 'right'. The main reason I cite for this is that there isn't a 'right' way anymore. There isn't a singular path everyone can agree upon that is 'right'. Some people want hardcore others want more casual. Some want complicated complex spreadsheets to number crunch while others want simple and easily accessible. Some want cute and cartoony others want realism and grittiness. Neither approach is 'right' but each are diametrically opposed that both cannot be part of the same MMO.

Personally I would like to see another singular awesome MMO which everyone wants to play but I am not optimistic that will ever happen again.

[ldev]

I guess TESO might be a one size fits all MMO tbh. It could all be hype, but the universe/dev/ambitions are promising.

whoooooa, hold on now. For example me - I'm a huge TES fan and a huge MMO fan, but I won't be touching that even with a stick. FPS controlls? Check. Abysmal ammount of skills? Check. Check for fail that is.

[WoWGoneBad]

From my experiences with MMOs of late, I find that its not the variety of MMOs or what they can offer so much as the TIME they have been around. I mean we have benn heavily into MMOs for what bout 10 years or more now.

The industry is getting stale and bloated with the over abundance of games, and they ALL have the same design and concept. Go quest get gear lvl up craft craft craft go lvl some more get gear and craft craft craft. then later its craft craft run dailies do pvp craft run more dailies go do a few achives for kicks craft craft craft.

Remember back when CoD first came out and revised DOOM.... MAN we were ALL OVER them playing them into the dirt, then other games came out same style, same concept, different visuals.

I think MMOs have begun to run their course and most gamers are just waiting on that NEXT BIG THING. I myself have really gotten into FireFall a FPS MMO that is really fun and fits my style of gameplay for now. If that Star Citizen ever comes out I will play that too for a while, hell I will even dabble in the comical stylings of Wildstar. And in the end I will return once again to the Galaxy Far Far Away.

[Armourboy]

I'm actually thinking what you are seeing is MMOs actually sliding back to what they were prior to WoW giving gaming companies and players crazy expectations. The only difference between the landscape today and what it was prior to WoW is the fact that there are simply a ton more options. Things will go back to being much more niche with smaller player bases where that 1 million mark is the benchmark goal again.

This is why I don't think you will see sub games die off completely as a pay model. Some of us old timers actually like them better, and I see in the future them being something that will be realm of the more " hardcore" and a place people migrate too that wants to be around a certain type of player. I also see the prices of the monthly subscription going up dramatically to compensate for the lower populations and most of us will be ok with that. Most games I think will continue to be F2P simply because it opens up the options to a less hard core crowd and probably a better value for more casual MMO players or those that like to bounce back and forth.

I think also right now you are seeing lots of movement simply because so many people are trying to find the game that does fill that niche. I think so many players migrated to WoW, and while it was great to be in a world with so many other players, there are simply lots of things it has sacrificed to get that wide spread audience. Its almost gotten to the point where MMO's are so generic that they almost do themselves more harm than good. I think there are a ton of people wanting something different, but they just can't put their finger on what that is exactly.

I'll use myself as an example. I'm going to be heading to FF14:ARR because after 8 years of WoW and games like it, I'm ready for a more complicated, grindy game. MoP did show me that I'm ready to get back to a game where I get heavily involved in one character, not 5-6 different ones. I want a longer leveling experience, where crafting is its own class, and end game may be something I never really worry about because I can find so much else to do. I want something with wide sprawling zones where there is actually a chance for death, and I want something where soloing may be possible but may not be the best way to do things. Now whether that turns out to be my long term niche I'm not sure of, but right now it will be a refreshing reset to what will be much more of an Pre-CU SWG feel.

[WoWGoneBad]

I'll use myself as an example. I'm going to be heading to FF14:ARR because after 8 years of WoW and games like it, I'm ready for a more complicated, grindy game. MoP did show me that I'm ready to get back to a game where I get heavily involved in one character, not 5-6 different ones. I want a longer leveling experience, where crafting is its own class, and end game may be something I never really worry about because I can find so much else to do. I want something with wide sprawling zones where there is actually a chance for death, and I want something where soloing may be possible but may not be the best way to do things. Now whether that turns out to be my long term niche I'm not sure of, but right now it will be a refreshing reset to what will be much more of an Pre-CU SWG feel.

I have been playing FireFall and the soling and chance at death is very strong here. You get missions where you are swarmed with mobs to get to the objective. Mobs themselves are not that strong but its the numbers that make up for it. I have a great time there now and TOR is slowly simmering on the back burner. I would love to find a fantasy MMO with he flavor of Vanilla where it actually took some work to level and solo. where the dungeons/FPs weren't so roflstomp. But alas I will prolly get flamed for feeling this way. Today's gen gamers don't want to work for their phat lootz and this is where my draw to MMOs is slowly dieing.