What can SE learn from Bioware's failing Star Wars MMO?

[SoapySan]

I can't say why it isn't as successful as other games. I think everything mentioned above might attribute to the whole picture. However I can say that I didn't like the game because the game felt dead. I don't mean player population either. There was no exploration no immersion. Go here do this story continue on else where! If you have a fully voiced over questing experience why wouldn't you make the entire world believable and real?

[Airget]

playing from 1-50 then another class up to 40 there are things that are easy to spot which is what made it fail.

-The ability to choose/create your story. Load of BS the "choices" are a poor gimmick which only manipulate the idea that your choices make a difference but really don't.

It honestly goes, well if you kill this person and the other person doesn't kill this person, that just means this person is only used in this story arc so whether you kill them or not has no real influence on the overall game plot. So your option to choose is nothing more then wasted resources that could have been spent on other parts of the gameplay.

-PVE and PVP balance. In their attempts to balance PVP they ended up nerfing PVE builds which pissed off a lot of people since the concept of a sneak attack imperial agent operative was pretty much deemed worthless ONLY because people were moaning for a nerf through PVP not PVE. Rather then just adjust abilities for PVP they just adjusted it to be the same for both PVE and PVP which pretty much made said build worthless.

-3 Skill trees so you can "customize" your characters but not really. So you have 3 skill trees but in all honestly maybe 1-2 builds are good and if you find a build that's to good it'll be nerfed for being to good, so because you found a build you like you are punished for it and have to make a new build and playstyle because of it. Something like this comes down to poor playtesting, this is what happens when you give each class to many abilities to work with, it's harder to find what works and what may be overpowered. Unlike in 14 where we currently have a simplified ability list but because of this simplication it's easier to balance the game overall and prevents the complicity of accidently overpowering or nerfing classes.

-Adjusting classes on a one by one basis. You should never nerf a class without seeing how it looks in the bigger picture, this goes back to the operative PVE/P nerf. So let's say in terms of ability you have 1>2>3>4 all the classes are imbalanced, so you go well that's not good we need to change it up so you change 1 to weaken it and add something to 3 but then you do this 3>2>4>1, now you've weakened 1 to much and have just made it to worse class. In a game where you aren't free to change your class on said character making a class you play feel worthless is a good way to lose subscribers. When it comes to balance more time and care needs to be taken into it so that it's 1=2=3=4 and not 1=2>3<4 kinda bs lol.

-Hitting 50 made crafting worthless. The gear from crafting became worthless once you were able to get the exclusive gear through the point system involved in pvp and the instances you could do, because of this only biochem was considered worthwhile because of it's reusable cures as well as exclusive medicines that only biochems could use which granted them with more attribute boost then the refular medpacks.

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Overall it just comes down to poor design focuses, if you focus on making decent gameplay first and an intriguing story it'll draw people. But when people play an MMO they want something that's different from WOW but at the same time they want something familiar enough so that they can adjust to the gameplay easily.

SWTOR only survived because of it's brand name, had this game been released by any other name it may have started with 1/20 the audience as only have 1/200 left by now lol.

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An mmo should never be based on "unique gimmicks" which add nothing to the overall game, if you want an mmo with choices that make sure those choices actually effect gameplay, FFXI had more choices compared to swtor when it came to campaign the choices you made for your nations strategy was put together based on other peoples choices to influence how they would act the following week. yet there's nothing in swtor which would suggest that choices made actually mean anything more then simply being light or dark lol.

They relied to much on the brand name, just like the original FF14 did but that failed faster because of how obvious it's shortcomings were. The reason why SWTOR lasted as long as it did is because of it's promises and it's attempt to connect with the community going as far as to have a guild summit months after released.

The thing about mmos is you shouldn't create something and say this is the reward. You should create a wide variety of things and have the player decide what their reward is. Such as with the suggestion that the beastiary will be added, it's something those interested in beastiary can do and enjoy while others might be more interested in fighting in hamlets or seeking out the roaming primals. You need a live open world to keep things interesting but also have to keep in mind that you want people to play a challenging game but you don't want the "challenge" to include things like a heavy reliance on claiming over other groups which is just no fun and a complete time sink found in older mmos.
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But ya mmo should never rely on a gimmick as it's main draw "completely story driven" gameplay aka "one player experience" lol SWTOR was pretty much a single player game that you played with others around you and maybe if you were bored would team up with them to do other events.

[Noir]

You would think the Star Wars universe would provide an ideal setting for an MMO. It has everything, from `wizards` to swordplay to epic duels to guys with blaster rifles. It has this planet, that planet, a rich and well established lore, depth, and so on and so forth. Despite this, it looks like Bioware and Lucas Arts have just released one huge dud on the MMO market. Rumors are circulating that Bioware is now exploring the F2P model and just completed a wave of free server transfers to accommodate people playing on empty servers. While advocates of F2P might argue otherwise... this to me sounds like the last gasps of an MMO in serious trouble. If this is true, considering the alleged investment in development and the fact that they had all of the Star Wars universe at their disposal, this can, should and will be considered a monumental failure.

Correct me if I'm wrong (sincerely!), but wasn't SW:TOR designed as a "casual friendly" WoW clone that's soloable? It definitely wasn't designed as an unforgiving, challenging `hardcore` struggle, that is for sure. It wasn't a game world that was designed and existed despite the player rather than one that existed for them (to use a `world-centric` game design definition i've read on this forum and liked).

I see a lot of people claim that the moron-friendly philosophy is the future of MMOs. That games like FFXI and Everquest are remnants of the past (that challenge is a remnant of the past) and that games that cater to people who don't have the time to play them, or that aren't very good at them, etc, is the wave of the future.

And yet... here we are, watching an MMO based in the Star Wars universe (which should translate into huge success by itself), backed by Lucas, EA and designed by Bioware, fall flat on its face six months after its release.

Now I'm not at all opposed to an MMO providing a good experience for casual players.
But to cater to them almost exclusively... IMO, you simply cannot cater to people who will barely play your game over the people who will and expect that to be the formula for success. WoW captured lightning in a bottle. That is my opinion. Everything came together for Blizzard and it came together for them at the right time.
I don't think, moving forward, that the secret to an MMO's success is in trying to clone that experience and game developers that believe that run a high risk of suffering SW:TOR's fate. This game had a rumored budget to be somewhere between 150 and 200 million dollars (is this correct?) as well as having the advantage of being Star Wars. It should have been the MMO of MMO's. Instead it's pathetic.

While this will no doubt be met with plenty of disagreement, I have always believed that FFXI could have done much better than it did (and it did pretty good) if (aside from actually advertising!) 99% of the content in the game wasn't designed for level 75's. It had, IMO, an endgame that any competitor would be hard pressed to rival, but little leading up to that.
When new players, RL friends or otherwise, asked me what they should do, the only answer I could give was "Get to 75."

I suspect the vast majority of players who tried XI and quit XI did so before even reaching the Dunes, when they found themselves lost, killing rabbits outside their starting city with no idea how to proceed or what awaited them if they had.
Most of the players SE lost, I imagine, were lost before ever reaching level 20, before they had the chance to become goal oriented, and that was, IMO, FFXI's biggest failing - not the challenges or the dangers presented by Vana'diel. That, I believe, is what ultimately played a large role hooking everyone.

So what does SW:TOR's lackluster success and seemingly dismal future say about what actually is the future of the genre and what should SE take away from this as it moves forward with 2.0?

Are you kidding me? I saw that piece of crap failing from light years the first time I watched the "teaser"
I saw the CGI and went from WOW awesooimmeee to the Wtffdddddddffffff pukeeeee after the real game started. Haven't seen a piece of crap grafics and gameplay since UO 20 years ago!

[Jinko]

I think SE has learnt more than enough from its own failing MMO.

[Jynx]

The main thing I take away from SWTOR is that Bioware can't give people what they promised and were over-ambitious from the get-go.

What SE should take from it? I'm not sure perhaps that ease of access and instanced (EVERYTHING) doesn't make your game last a long time?

[Zahak]

Wouldn't it be funny if SE inspired Bio-ware to make Star Wars 2.0

[gahoo]

I didn't play SW, but I think the OP touches on a major issue (and one where FFXIV failed initially) - that of progression. This comes in a number of forms:

1. Gear progression. You need to have goals - and those goals need to be throughout the leveling progress - not just at endgame. The original "recommended" gear defeated this purpose. The excitement and drive to hit the next level is typically because you can equip something new and shiny.

2. Quest progression. You need quests to be in a series, to be voluminous, and to be close together level-wise. Same concept as the above. New content provides goals. That content can be gear, but can and should also be quests. (And I mean quests, not main mission lines). I think there is a fine line on volume here. Not every NPC should have a quest at any given time, but frankly I think there should still be a lot more than what we have (which is a ton more than what we started with of course). To me, at every level each city should have ~10-15 quests available - right now we have more like 3-5 every few levels/city.

2b. Main scenario/mission progression. They need to be closer together. Maybe this one is just me since I level slowly, but you lose the storyline when you are weeks if not months between missions. Sure they can be done faster, but I would prefer an installation (even if smaller) every other level.

3a. Leveling progression. The FFXI dunes served a purpose. In FFXI there was a progression from each city as to where you grinded, and as you leveled up you got to move on to new, established, areas. Sure people complained, but it was still a goal. It was a goal to get to the dunes, and a goal to get out of the dunes.

3b. Raid progression. This also holds true for raids/dungeons and other content. You have the goal of "unlocking" and being able to see new areas and experience new content.

Anyway - to me the key words are "progression" and "goals". Again, not sure what SWTOR's "failure" was, but the lesson learned of the launch, and of playing and testing a host of other MMOs, is that you need to lock down to the content and then hand it out little but little as people progress. That provides the goals that the players need, and keeps the addiction in tact.

[elreed]

I agree with the op. dont clone games, take the best from previous games (we've been reading a lot about using stuff from previous FF's) thats a good way to get quality content, but give it a FFXIV feel, same that we've been reading they're looking forward to do, dont make easy content, i prefer wiping a lot, but have a reward according to my effort not to luck.

I think thats the most important thing in MMO's, i dont want to clear content in 1 month, i want it to last a lot, to have a long term goal, with clear objectives so everytime i log in i can focus on getting to that spot little by little, let the new players know better the game at low levels, involve them in lot of global activities so they have something to do everytime they login, same for high level players.

And one of the most important things that i would love to see is to discover NM's, epic areas, hidden dungeons stuff that we dont even know that it was implemented, let us have stuff that we as comunity have to figure it out so we can have discussions on this forums and get to a solution, and of course the creepy feeling when getting to high level areas.

With that SE can have me for long time...

[Darkillumina]

People moan and complain about how difficult FFXI and earlier MMO's were but the one thing they did right was keep people playing. Let's break it down.

Current MMO's allow you to blast to end-game very quickly with minimal challenge. End-game dungeons are often a joke and people quickly run out of things to do. We've seen it with DCUO, TOR and many more modern MMO's. They are great initially but the desire to play and experience it runs out very, very fast.

If you look at FFXI's numbers between 2004-2007 the player numbers were very consistent. People were still doing new things and experiencing new things due to the difficulty. Involved. Hell, 6 months after launch in FFXI people were still figuring shit out. 6 months after TOR launch the game is struggling and people are leaving in droves.

The marketing guys look at WoW and its simplicity and see an instant cash grab. What they fail to realize, is that after the initial excitement the game quickly dies out due to people getting everything done super fast. The WoW people are happy playing WoW and the market is over-saturated with common MMO's. There is a market however, for a more traditional MMO experience.

[Duuude007]

Wouldn't it be funny if SE inspired Bio-ware to make Star Wars 2.0

I thought it was already a 2.0 of Star Wars Galaxies, lol.