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

[Duelle]

I just love how it's not AS MUCH as a spamfest as SWTOR and other MMO's are. Your current action has to complete and you can't just stop it mid action. I am one of the few that likes the way we are planted to the ground when we select an action (except for self buffs and whatnot). It just makes battle flow and look more beautiful. In other mmo's, I never pay attention to my character. In XIV, I do a lot of the time just to watch the animations. I want SE to build up on that. I don't want them to do what all the other MMO's have done already and I'm afraid that's what they are going to do.

I'm the opposite, because I enjoy encounters where I have to move around and watch out for things in the environment. I found XI's battle engine and fights very boring for the most part, and at the same time understand that type of design severely limits how you can design bosses; the only thing that attempted to make them seem difficult was the amount of damage flying around and steep resource limits on mages. You couldn't do a Loatheb-type encounter in FFXI, for example. Doubt you could do one in this game yet, as healing hasn't quite gotten there.

[Neptune]

Dude, SW:TOR had more subscribers than FFXI ever had. It is a success where FFXI failed. And right now, it still has more than FFXI ever had. So you don't have any ground to stand on, but bitch ground.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Dude, SW:TOR had more subscribers than FFXI ever had. It is a success where FFXI failed. And right now, it still has more than FFXI ever had. So you don't have any ground to stand on, but bitch ground.

oh, we have plenty instead. Just because something have more subscribers than another, don't mean they're doing good.

[Miliant]

I am perplexed by two things.

The first is the fact that you somehow don't consider Tanaka's convoluting grindfest of a game a failure. FFXIV failed even worse than SWTOR. The only reason FFXIV is alive right now is because of Yoshida's changes and Square's infinite patience with it. These changes were made to make the game more user-friendly (or as you put it, moron-friendly).

The second thing is the end objective of your post. I presume you base it on the assumption that FFXIV is becoming a game "only for casuals" and that's what you want to avoid by means of this post. Still, looking at the game, I fail to see how FFXIV is becoming a game that caters "only to casuals," with most content being added for large groups of Lv50s. Furthermore, several times Yoshida's stated that his idea is to cater to everyone. So, overall, I see no reason for concern.

[Kinseykinz]

Star-wars is falling for many reasons... but most of them can lead back to this. Star Wars is an Iconic Story and a big part of modern culture. Your grandma might not play video games, but she knows who Darth Vader is. When you are working with such a beloved storyline with characters everyone knows, it is hard to invent new quests, storylines etc. that keep people interested without them saying 'Hey, that would NEVER happen!' Because of this, the MMO will always be limited and it will sooner or later become stale to all but the most diehard of players. Storyline is what keeps people going, and well...we ALL know what should basically happen in a Star Wars MMO. MMO's work best for games that can be open-ended and/or pick up different themes ideas etc.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Star-wars is falling for many reasons... but most of them can lead back to this. Star Wars is an Iconic Story and a big part of modern culture. Your grandma might not play video games, but she knows who Darth Vader is. When you are working with such a beloved storyline with characters everyone knows, it is hard to invent new quests, storylines etc. that keep people interested without them saying 'Hey, that would NEVER happen!' Because of this, the MMO will always be limited and it will sooner or later become stale to all but the most diehard of players. Storyline is what keeps people going, and well...we ALL know what should basically happen in a Star Wars MMO. MMO's work best for games that can be open-ended and/or pick up different themes ideas etc.

Well, they could come up with "Long time ago, in a far far alternative galaxy..." where darth vader would conquer the universe with ponies and the emperor in reality is a pop singer :P
with modern lucasarts, all is possible

[Nix]

When SW:TOR first came out, I had a blast, it was pretty fun but I soon found out that there was so much wrong with the game;

Quests revolved around "Kill 20 of this, kill 10 of this, now go kill 60 of this. Stage 3 of the quest? ok, go kill 40 of that same mob" and it was like that from 1-50. There would be the occasional "Go click on the blue highlighted object" but that's about as varied as it'd get.

If you levelled a 2nd character on the same faction (repub/empire) there was only a small handful of quests that were different -- the class specific ones. For a game that revolved around mainly questing for levels, this made it very monotonous, very boring especially with the "Go kill x amount of these" over and over and over again. (Thinking of Taris still makes me want to punch somone, way too many rakghouls!)

The customer service was BY FAR the worst I've ever encountered. I know some people will say "Well square's sucks!" But waiting 3 weeks for a reply to a GM ticket only to be given a copy/paste response that had nothing to do with your original problem is pretty silly.

Only a handful of content once you'd reached 50, which was suprisingly not that much different from content offered throughout the game beforehand. I think the only really unique stuff was Ops since the 'hard mode' FPs were exactly the same as the regular ones but with amped up difficulty for some extra rewards, there wasn't really anything fresh about it.

I could go on and on about the downside of SWTOR, that being said I don't see FFXIV going that way, especially not with Yoshi at the helm. People can say that it was because SW:TOR was so solo friendly that it is dying, this isn't the case -- It's a compounded mix of a lot of things but the game is very instant gratification (Max craft level in a day, high % loot droprate etc), even worse than XIV is I think. That being said, it's possible to make a game solo friendly and still be a challenge in some ways.
Here you can xp solo in leves if you like, it's more rewarding in a party but still viable in a solo setting. This I find is a nice addition to the game, I'm not saying the whole game should be solo friendly, but there should be the option to enjoy that kind of content if you want to, you know?

Wow I'm kinda rambling . . .

TL;DR -- SW:TOR messed up what could have been a great game, and it wasn't just that it was so 'solo friendly' that caused the problems.

Have a good day everyone!

[Agoven]

Will a Star Wars fan of 50 years old play an MMO? Does the younger generation really enjoy Star Wars or is the franchise only for the older generation?

Why do we no longer have a Star Trek TV show? etc etc...

Why do we still have Final Fantasy? It's because SE makes it and remakes it...so that every generation can still enjoy it in a new manner. And they continue to make Final Fantasy and build off their predecessors...SE carries the franchise forward to the new generation of players while carrying the past generations.

SE works very hard not be yesterday's news...just saying...

Why can't MMOs be a fad? MUDs are your original computer RPGs...console systems...hand held systems...what is to say with all of them? It's fair to say video gaming could be a fad.

It's like saying adventure games are a genre...but mostly dead genre...so thus was a fad.

Will the WoW generation end with WoW? Those high school and college kids are now 10 years older...are they still playing games or have they started families, gotten jobs, and moved on to bigger and better things like REAL LIFE?

Pokemon was said to be a fad...it's gone on for 17+ years now and still going strong as ever...

SE doesn't need to learn anything from SWOTOR.

SE just needs to continue working to improve and add content to the game and add new and interesting things and systems that stand the test of time...and FFXIV will be a success for another decade.

[Rognis]

I'm not too much into star wars but another problem I read was jedi's standing on equal ground as gunners. Alot of the star wars fanbase hated this and the technology being equal or better than what the future held. Lucas arts had an amazing game in SWG before SOE ruined it and XIV has kind of grasped at what made SWG great. Architects building the biggest cities on the servers or a few outposts at important spots. If SE did more with the DoH/DoL i'm sure it would grab more people than just building up the combat aspects of the game.

[Darkvalkyr]

Didn't help that ME3 ending haters boycotted TOR after the game, too.