Patch 1.5 and F2P conversion happening 11/15

[Callax]

I never got the whole "Compare SW:ToRs first year to WoWs first year" or whatever the you call it argument. Games should be compared to whatever is out right now. Sure maybe ToR might have had more then WoWs release, but it's not going against that it's going against the current WoW. Should I have to wait 7 years for this game to have all these features?

Newly released games almost always have the features that are considered a commonplace in their genre, why should ToR be an exception?

[RoninaThorstone]

Should I have to wait 7 years for this game to have all these features?

No. But you should expect 7 years (+ like 3 years of development) on release day of a new MMO either.

[Callax]

No. But you should expect 7 years (+ like 3 years of development) on release day of a new MMO either.

Yes, I'm not saying I expect that, but I do expect what is considered the commonplace features of MMO (addons, LFG, macros...).

[Jtbrig7390]

Yes, I'm not saying I expect that, but I do expect what is considered the commonplace features of MMO (addons, LFG, macros...).

Addons are not a major thing in the MMO world *besides with WOW* hell wow is really the only one that use's them besides the few that EQ1/2 has.
"Unless there is another MMO i don't know about that dose it"

But i do agree that Macros and LFG should have already been added.

And about LFG in SWTOR: It is a good system but what sucks is how much reward the dungeons lack pre-lvl50 the xp is low only worth doing for the quest once and the gear gets outleveled fast.

[RoninaThorstone]

I think that EA should sell addons in the cash shop.

recount, power auras, deadly boss mods, gladius, ect.

[Redblade]

1. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they did it better than any other company would have.
2. How much it was "needed" is subjective.

1. Never disagreed with that, hence why I took that part of SWTOR in my mix.
2. Perhaps but I do know most mentions I seen love the story part but not the side quest part, if I had planned it I'd probably include some side quests in the main story cut scene and have some on a mission terminal like BW eventually did with dailies. This would have saved a lot of development on cut scenes that generally didn't seem to needed.

Dailies are "easier" to make.

It's going to depend on how good you want it to be. Kill 10 mob dailies, or complicated things? Tunnel shooter, or 3D space sim? How good it is, how engaging.. it's all going to depend on time and effort (and fucking money).

Yes dailies are easier and also not acceptable from a customer standpoint, just look at the complaints in WoW now. My point was more that it's much easier to have independent teams working on such content as it has less impact on the main game.

All I'll say about this is: When it wasn't in game on launch or within 2 weeks of opening day, people flipped their fucking lids.

That was because there was no competitive form of PvP if we're talking SWTOR, if it had ranked WZs at launch or Arenas then it would have been fine, you don't need both or necessarily either as long as you have some form of competitive PvP.

And yet, there were a lot of complaints about the GTN being shitty.

Well when we're talking SWTOR their UI guy/team couldn't design a proper one if their life depended on it, look at games like Tera and EvE for nice versions, hell even WoW's is ok with addons.

And I hope to never see one. At least, not in a game I want to play. Gathering 42 small items to make a pair of leather gloves would just piss me off. Look at Vanguard: Saga of Heroes' crafting system for an example of insanity.

I hope I will, there is a difference between complex and unnecessarily time consuming, EvE has by far the most complex crafting system and it's really good, not that you would need such a complex system for a MMORP but still it's a good model to work from.

No. God no. If there's anything you've said so far that I disagree with, this beats it by a mile.

This is a rather big question and it's hard to get in to it without derailing completely, my view in short would be linear TBC/Rift style where you over time trickle that content down through your reward system, similar to how it's done in Rift with some of my own takes on it. The key is to have enough content outside of raiding so it's not mandatory.

See Rift. The characters there are stiff. When they jump, I feel like the character's back should break upon landing. This is a pretty special requirement, and it's a deal breaker for a lot of people. Even if they don't realize it, something feels "off" and bothers them over time.

Doesn't bother me in Rift, my point was that developers create the game based on their vision and copying WoW's movement might not be one of them, doubt it's that hard to emulate it if you really where aiming at doing just that.

I'll use this metaphor: You could create 20 games for a regular Nintendo and still not pay the cost involved with a quality game of today, MMO or otherwise.

And a well made subscription game would make you more over time, it's a catch 22, if you compromise in development to save money you will end up making less and less back, if you commit to making a MMORPG today you better be prepared to go the distance as the customer demands quality these days.

The community (who wanted addons) would probably disagree with you. Imagine WoW with no DBM. That's probably why they didn't let people fuck with the API. Addons made raiding easier in WoW. They're already on a crunch for getting content that's not done in three hours.

Which is fair enough, point is if you as developer don't want to hand that type of control out then you better be prepared to meet the customers demands, in the case of SWTOR we're back at the UI team which, again, didn't have a clue as to what a good UI looked like nor what the customers would want from it.

Not in my opinion. You can play WoW, Rift, SWTOR, and GW2 through solo content all the way to end-game. Group content is almost never necessary to the leveling part of the story. It's just an added benefit.

Sure but you need group content for those that want it, either way I doubt group quests is a major time consumer here, dungeons sure but it's generally being worked around through reusing it at end game.

This is one of those industry things. If you have 23 things on a list, but only the time and money to add 5, what gets left out?

Well if you only have time and money for 5 out of 23 it's time to look at your management and original plan to make a MMORPG, clearly you where not prepared enough nor had the financial backing to make it.

Minecraft is a sandboxy building game, that struck gold like WoW did on release. The kinds of people that make minecraft their main game and the kind of player that's heavily into MMOs aren't the same. MMO players play minecraft, sure, but it's very different. A few examples of graphics being important are all the MMOs out today. Rift feels clunky, SWTOR didn't allow high-res shit, WoW feels old and dated, etc. You say it's not important, but design an MMO like the Secret World or something and no matter how much good shit you have, you'll not get more than 200k subs.

WoW feels old and dated yet it's by far the most played MMORPG in the west, there are other non MMORPGs like Counter Strike back in the day wasn't even close to the best looking game around yet it was insanely popular because it was fun and engaging to play, hell it got less popular when being updated to have better graphics as shit.

Point being that you don't have to have the best graphics in the market as long as it looks decent and is engaging and fun.

Again, I agree, but almost no one else does. Ilum was laggy, so you got comments like "the game is shit". You have to sell your game to those assholes that expect everything.

The problem with SWTOR was that even a 20 vs 20 on Ilume was horrible, today it might have improved to the point where you could go 20 vs 20 but it's just not capable of doing 100 vs 100, other games are even if they do tend to lag.

I want to disagree here, but I don't want to talk out my ass. I honestly don't know shit about development. Maybe it works that way, but I think it's much more complicated. Could be wrong.

I'm no expert either, just using common sense and logic.

I think it works both ways. Unrealistic expectations all around, from Dev/Publisher to Gamers.

Perhaps, it's gone from a sellers market to a buyer one though.

As for the content thing, it goes back to what I said earlier. SWTOR's shit is waaaaay more complicated, and probably harder to work with and get new stuff out.

I'm sorry but you have to explain that one to me, how is SWTOR more complicated that any other MMORPG out there, I'd even go as far as to say both Rift and WoW has way more features and systems which would in effect make them by far more complex, this is not to mention EvE, while not being a MMORPG it's probably the most complex of them all and has less than 500k subscribers and make due with that, and have done so while making content for more than 7 years and never charged for an expansion.

[Arlee]

I feel as though this thread has gotten a bit far off the "Patch 1.5" discussion and a bit too much into the "SWTOR vs WoW" discussion. Lets bring it back to more of the former discussion please

[Lord Kristivas]

And a well made subscription game would make you more over time, it's a catch 22, if you compromise in development to save money you will end up making less and less back, if you commit to making a MMORPG today you better be prepared to go the distance as the customer demands quality these days.

You made a lot of good points, some I agree with and some I don't. This one is what it really boils down to. I think if EA had given BioWare more time and money, they could have done just that. Share-holders and the public getting pissed off that it was taking so long to release really fucked them in the end. We could have had such a better game. It's the same kind of catch 22 you mentioned. Developers with the money to make a good game often have publishers rushing it, while developers without a parent company can take the time and dedication to making a game amazing, but lack the funds.

Sadly, with SWTOR falling as much as it has (along with all the other non-WoW [not counting EvE] MMOs not pulling in good sub numbers), who's going to basically throw their money away trying to make another grand AAA title with all the shit we want? Activision, with Titan? The Elder Scrolls MMO that people are already bitching about? EA will continue to handle this badly, numbers will slip further, and it's going to be awhile before someone has the balls to try it again.

I feel as though this thread has gotten a bit far off the "Patch 1.5" discussion and a bit too much into the "SWTOR vs WoW" discussion. Lets bring it back to more of the former discussion please

Apologies.

Any guesses as to when 1.5 will be released? Guessing Nov 13th, personally.

[Keren]

I would wish some changes for atleast 2-3 abilities - just to give the theorycrafters something to do. It is really bothersome that in most places there isn't something to recalc in month. I would wish some switches in techtrees etc... just to start optimizing again :/

[Arlee]

I think Nov.13th is a good guess. Though I wouldn't completely rule out the following week even though it is Thanksgiving (in America), but I would hope they wouldn't do that.

[Edge-]

I think Nov.13th is a good guess. Though I wouldn't completely rule out the following week even though it is Thanksgiving (in America), but I would hope they wouldn't do that.

Well, November 13th is already a pretty busy day with BOII and Rift expansion dropping, and they haven't had any buildup for the announcement yet. I wouldn't be surprised if it were pushed back to December and it transitioned on the one year anniversary or something. As it stands, they barely have a full week before announcing and that's a pretty short amount of time if EA wants to put any kind of ad campaign behind it.

[Kelimbror]

Well, November 13th is already a pretty busy day with BOII and Rift expansion dropping, and they haven't had any buildup for the announcement yet. I wouldn't be surprised if it were pushed back to December and it transitioned on the one year anniversary or something. As it stands, they barely have a full week before announcing and that's a pretty short amount of time if EA wants to put any kind of ad campaign behind it.

Yeah, I don't really expect this to come out before Thanksgiving. I would assume they want at least 2 weeks of advertisement during the holiday season or they don't actually want business. I think launching in November would be a poor move. The fact that they have given no indication that they are ready to this is not a great sign. It's not even a matter of not wanting to specify a date and fail to hit it, because there aren't even whispers of this happening soon.

There have been no promotional materials outside of the already affected sphere of influence. Until they start giving this information to the public, they are not ready. If they go ahead and transition without fanfare or advertisements...well...I guess they just don't care.

[Arlee]

Well, November 13th is already a pretty busy day with BOII and Rift expansion dropping, and they haven't had any buildup for the announcement yet. I wouldn't be surprised if it were pushed back to December and it transitioned on the one year anniversary or something. As it stands, they barely have a full week before announcing and that's a pretty short amount of time if EA wants to put any kind of ad campaign behind it.

Oh those are totally valid points too =/ Honestly they are sort of difficult to predict sometimes...

[SirRobin]

We'll be able to see how F2P affects the live servers soon enough. Star Wars has been reduced to "people continue to be subscribing" and "underperformed" in EA's earnings calls so one could say that this is TOR's last chance to grab the spotlight again, so to speak.

[RoninaThorstone]

We'll be able to see how F2P affects the live servers soon enough. Star Wars has been reduced to "people continue to be subscribing" and "underperformed" in EA's earnings calls so one could say that this is TOR's last chance to grab the spotlight again, so to speak.

Ugh. "people still play this game" is not a ringing endorsement. : / God damn it.

[Edge-]

We'll be able to see how F2P affects the live servers soon enough. Star Wars has been reduced to "people continue to be subscribing" and "underperformed" in EA's earnings calls so one could say that this is TOR's last chance to grab the spotlight again, so to speak.

They barely mentioned the game and side-stepped the question when pressed for more info. Kinda not that reassuring -_-

[Dundebuns]

After reading the changes I can say without a doubt I wont be returning to SWTOR. While I am all for limiting f2p accounts in order to convince people to pay a subscription, the way that a f2p player can impact on the gameplay of subscribers is far too dire. And it is even the f2p players fault.

[SirRobin]

They barely mentioned the game and side-stepped the question when pressed for more info. Kinda not that reassuring -_-

After the last one with slipped below and well above, I figured they wouldn't give a number at all this time.

[Kelimbror]

After the last one with slipped below and well above, I figured they wouldn't give a number at all this time.

This was the CFO's response:

People have hung on the subscription numbers and it hasn't reflected the underlying business very well," he said. "As you move to free to play, what does a subscription really mean?

Interesting, considering to them a subscription apparently means everything. What they say to the public and what they offer in the game are completely contradictory statements.

[Edge-]

Interesting, considering to them a subscription apparently means everything. What they say to the public and what they offer in the game are completely contradictory statements.

To be fair, that goes for just about everything that EA C-level execs say.

They talk about wanting to make "fun and engaging" social games that are "good", yet turn around and release Sim City Social. Played it for 10 minutes and spent half that time telling the game I didn't want to constantly share everything I did or bother my friends for help. Then I had to spend 2 weeks unsubscribing from their damn mailing lists, going to far as having to contact their support because I kept getting mail from lists I supposedly unsubscribed from.

So the reality vs. what the execs talk about rarely match up. Like, super rarely.