could SWTOR pull a FF14 and re-launch as SWTHR

[Witchblade77]

Yeah, at the time they made the change it baffled me. It was working just fine and they made it bad. The more difficult flashpoints were always there for anyone that cared to do them, so it seemed like the only reason for the change was to make more casual players "step up" to the higher difficulty. As it is in all these games, I imagine the result is that the players just simply stopped doing them, as both of us have indicated.



My sub ran out about a month or two ago and right now I just log in on one or two toons to do conquest when I feel in the mood. I'll possibly resub for the expansion and new Galactic Season, but that really hinges on how the changes in the pipeline look to me. In the meantime, I'm having plenty of fun in other games, but it's annoying that what used to be my two favorite games to play, SWTOR and WoW, have both gone in directions that have led me to bail out on them.

yeah. I more or less plan on hopping in to pick up daily rewards since I just realized that there are actual login achievements few weeks ago, so might as well, but aside from that... I don't even feel like finishing couple of stories I wanted to, on alts.

[Swnem]

So, just to add in my opinion on this "group focus" thing.

It can only work if the game makes a new raid every 5/6 months. That general group players are in WoW and FF because of the content cadence.
SWTOR makes a new raid every 2 years atm. The group players won't stay. They have better products for their needs.
SWTOR aimed more at the solo player audience. That allowed them to capture them better than the other groups. Also, this group doesn't consume content as fast. They are the ideal group for the current SWTOR.

So... no content, no chance the groupers/raiders will stay.
Lack of focus on solo's means some will leave

The solution is simple. They need to support the game like the competition does. Will they be able to? Likely not.

[Beefhammer]

I don't think so.
It was very high budget. No way EA will invest more money on it.

Japanese (such as SquareSoft) has high honor.
It wants to redeem itself. I doubt EA cares.

Not really a budget issue. SWToR was totally fine and playable upon launch. FF14 was complete unplayable garbage from day 1. SE had to do something to salvage it or risk losing a ton of money. SWToR was a success from day one despite being average to above average at best.

Will this be a positive change to the game? Absolutely. Will it see a a rebound the like of FF14ARR? Probably not.

[Edge-]

Not really a budget issue. SWToR was totally fine and playable upon launch. FF14 was complete unplayable garbage from day 1. SE had to do something to salvage it or risk losing a ton of money. SWToR was a success from day one despite being average to above average at best.

Will this be a positive change to the game? Absolutely. Will it see a a rebound the like of FF14ARR? Probably not.

Eeeehhhhhh, yeah it probably is. I imagine it'd trigger licensing renegotiations with Disney, and given that they already turned down a pitch for Battlefront 3 from DICE due to licensing fees, I doubt they're looking to spend big on it. Also, they're likely not inclined to invest big in an "old" PC only MMO that's well past its prime and likely not going to see a big return.

FFXIV 1.0 was garbage yeah, and they ate shit for it and had to rebuild the game. But SWTOR was still deeply flawed at launch - the engine was hot garbage for end-users, servers were a mess as they were throwing up hundreds at a time, and the game was fairly broken. Playable sure, not as fundamentally flawed as FFXIV 1.0 sure, but still hugely flawed which is why it saw such a steep dropoff. Again, they thought it'd take folks 3-5 months to hit level cap, they legit had no idea what they were doing (same goes for FFXIV 1.0 devs).

If there was ever going to be an ARR style reboot, it would've had to be after launch. But that didn't happen, even if they did some fairly big updates for its F2P relaunch.

It's almost always a budget issue, which is precisely why EA decided not to invest big in a reboot for Anthem, for example.

[Beefhammer]

Eeeehhhhhh, yeah it probably is. I imagine it'd trigger licensing renegotiations with Disney, and given that they already turned down a pitch for Battlefront 3 from DICE due to licensing fees, I doubt they're looking to spend big on it. Also, they're likely not inclined to invest big in an "old" PC only MMO that's well past its prime and likely not going to see a big return.

FFXIV 1.0 was garbage yeah, and they ate shit for it and had to rebuild the game. But SWTOR was still deeply flawed at launch - the engine was hot garbage for end-users, servers were a mess as they were throwing up hundreds at a time, and the game was fairly broken. Playable sure, not as fundamentally flawed as FFXIV 1.0 sure, but still hugely flawed which is why it saw such a steep dropoff. Again, they thought it'd take folks 3-5 months to hit level cap, they legit had no idea what they were doing (same goes for FFXIV 1.0 devs).

If there was ever going to be an ARR style reboot, it would've had to be after launch. But that didn't happen, even if they did some fairly big updates for its F2P relaunch.

It's almost always a budget issue, which is precisely why EA decided not to invest big in a reboot for Anthem, for example.

It was flawed but completely playable. Thise flaws still exists today and the game has been playable and successful. There was/is no reason for a reboot. The stuff they have done since the launch have done enough to improve the game for the better and this upcoming change will go even further to improve the experience.

If SWToR was as shit as FF14 was at launch it may have happened since everyone was still searching for that big MMO money.