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

[Duelle]

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?

Ignoring your badly-placed diatribe (TOR's downfall won't be philosopher's stone to returning the MMO genre to the days of no-life-EQ-gaming, despite how you wish it were), the following are the problems of TOR:

1) Crappy engine: one of the things that really cause trouble is how garbage the Hero engine is (not as bad as crystal tools, but its down there). Worst of all is that Bioware built the game on an outdated version of the Hero engine and supposedly declined to receiving updates from the guys who made it.

2) Lacking class balance: In retrospect, all the classes were designed seemingly with a single-player game in mind, and it shows when the jedi consular rose to being the "only" viable healer. Not to account the amount of brokeness in PvP.

3) Lack of endgame content: Much like FFXIV(!), TOR doesn't have much in the way of high level content. Hence why the operations were released in a state some consider premature, flashpoints were not properly tuned and so on.

4) Imbalance of population: In one of the few times aesthetics harm rather than help, Sith outnumbered Republic players considerably since launch because people liked the Sith. That's REALLY bad in a game with a PvP element.

Casual-friendly had nothing to do with TOR's issues. Bioware just made a crapton of bad design decisions and it bit them in the ass.

What I find funny about the OP is that even the WoW crowd looks at TOR and points out these technical issues and bad decisions over saying "0mg w0w clon fa1lz bring bak n0-lifez tr0ll0ll". The Hero engine is a technical issue. The decision of launching the game with barely any PvE content was a bad decisions. Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars making the hop to live OPd like they were in beta was a bad decision. Skimming on a lot of the stuff they wanted to add was a bad decision. Launching without the basic MMO tools was a bad decision.

...in a way, TOR is pretty much FFXIV but without the company behind it willing to pump money into fixing the game. Knowing EA, they'll dump the game soon enough. Not that I didn't see any of it coming, because when I saw that people like the guy behind WAR's Bright Wizard fiasco was on the TOR team, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force. :O

[Viritess]

Ignoring your badly-placed diatribe (TOR's downfall won't be philosopher's stone to returning the MMO genre to the days of no-life-EQ-gaming, despite how you wish it were), the following are the problems of TOR:

1) Crappy engine: one of the things that really cause trouble is how garbage the Hero engine is (not as bad as crystal tools, but its down there). Worst of all is that Bioware built the game on an outdated version of the Hero engine and supposedly declined to receiving updates from the guys who made it.

2) Lacking class balance: In retrospect, all the classes were designed seemingly with a single-player game in mind, and it shows when the jedi consular rose to being the "only" viable healer. Not to account the amount of brokeness in PvP.

3) Lack of endgame content: Much like FFXIV(!), TOR doesn't have much in the way of high level content. Hence why the operations were released in a state some consider premature, flashpoints were not properly tuned and so on.

4) Imbalance of population: In one of the few times aesthetics harm rather than help, Sith outnumbered Republic players considerably since launch because people liked the Sith. That's REALLY bad in a game with a PvP element.

Casual-friendly had nothing to do with TOR's issues. Bioware just made a crapton of bad design decisions and it bit them in the ass.

What I find funny about the OP is that even the WoW crowd looks at TOR and points out these technical issues and bad decisions over saying "0mg w0w clon fa1lz bring bak n0-lifez tr0ll0ll". The Hero engine is a technical issue. The decision of launching the game with barely any PvE content was a bad decisions. Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars making the hop to live OPd like they were in beta was a bad decision. Skimming on a lot of the stuff they wanted to add was a bad decision. Launching without the basic MMO tools was a bad decision.

...in a way, TOR is pretty much FFXIV but without the company behind it willing to pump money into fixing the game. Knowing EA, they'll dump the game soon enough. Not that I didn't see any of it coming, because when I saw that people like the guy behind WAR's Bright Wizard fiasco was on the TOR team, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force. :O

Just wanted to addressone of your points, because point 1 is more of a grey area then the Hero Engine is crap.

Bioware bought an early build of the hero engine, and did not contract the Hero engine designers for updates. They then re-programmed the bejeezus out of it. The Engine Bioware used could be hardly called the Hero engine anymore.

Class balance was pretty lackluster. From 1-50 I enjoyed my Jedi Shadow enough. I found some of the base issues are slightly covered up by the fun of being a Jedi. Weeee. then hit lvl 50. All the money (and lots of it) i spent for crafting, useless.

One of the big issues i think BW found was Faction imbalance. They totally ignored the probability of a large segemnt of people gravitating to the Dark side. And did nothing via effects, cool moves, cool gear or ANYTHING to prevent, nor systems to fix, such an issue. They instead denied the issues, but its not easy to hide the difference.

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All in all, i belive the OP argument is faulty on the grounds that Because SW:tor failed, Casual doesn't work.

Not adding goals to progress over the long term can hurt a game.

But "instant Gratification" is not limited to those with only a few hours to spend. One of the best ways to facilitate quality crafting and stable markets into a game is to make Endgame rewards depend on Crafters to furnish the "phat lootz". But even some the "hardcore" don't want to depends on anyone beside their static group.

The "glory days" of hardcore gaming had a MUCH smaller amount of games on the market too. Companies will go where the money goes.

The only way to make your MMO desires known is to as a gamer, stop paying 100+ dollars for Collectors edition access before we even know what we're buying (The Secret world, i'm eyeballing you!)

I had more rant, but i'll pass since this will likely get buried. My thoughts are not the same as the OP. A solid game with a solid gameplay for all can be done. A single game need not have a single audience. Its the mechanics and systems placed there that decide that.

[Duelle]

Class balance was pretty lackluster. From 1-50 I enjoyed my Jedi Shadow enough. I found some of the base issues are slightly covered up by the fun of being a Jedi. Weeee. then hit lvl 50. All the money (and lots of it) i spent for crafting, useless.

I saw it as more the fact that the developers went out of their way to make non-force users more appealing, because what everyone argued back when TOR was announced was that it would follow that silly tradition where the Jedi steal the show and everyone else would be fodder. Just like it is in the movies. Hence the combat superiority of ranged classes like the Trooper and the Smuggler; to get every tom, dick and harry that saw the movies to actually respect the classes, especially in the case of the Trooper due to how Stormtroopers and Clone Troopers were useless fodder in the movies.

One of the big issues i think BW found was Faction imbalance. They totally ignored the probability of a large segemnt of people gravitating to the Dark side. And did nothing via effects, cool moves, cool gear or ANYTHING to prevent, nor systems to fix, such an issue. They instead denied the issues, but its not easy to hide the difference.

There was no stopping this either way. The sith are just more appealing between their very pragmatic society, the power structure, the cool lightning and so on. That's really where the appeal of being the faction that have historically been bad guys in Star Wars kind of took over.