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

[Asiaine]

Well, I haven't met a person yet that truly enjoys level grinding. It's accepted by most MMORPG veterans that "the real game begins at the level cap", so many people rush to get there as quickly as possible.

*wavies* hello. I enjoy a bit of the 'grinding' xp, as it's a great way to chat with people in XP parties and perfect some of the finer aspects of your job. Although I am thinking mostly of FFXI pre-COP era XP.

[Antipika]

Well, I haven't met a person yet that truly enjoys level grinding. It's accepted by most MMORPG veterans that "the real game begins at the level cap", so many people rush to get there as quickly as possible.

You certainly didn't play SWTOR then, the best part is the leveling and people left mostly because of the unbalanced endgame once Level 50 is reached. The game is heavily story driven and your journey from 1 to 50 is painless, as you don't really feel the grind (like you do on XIV, especially past level 30 where most of people are doing Raptor > Natalan grind fest).

Look, ever since Yoshi publically stated that Star Wars's problem was launching the game without enough content (which, while true, it still had more content at launch by far than XIV originally did),

SWTOR 1.0 had more content than XIV 1.22b have and will have more than XIV 1.23 unless SE release a super huge patch. But drop rate aren't low, so players went through the content faster.

Drop rate in high level 4-mans dungeons in SWTOR is 100%. Guaranteed drop on final boss and it's useable for 1 of the 4 class group of the game, meaning that if your party is made of 4 players from 4 different class group, there won't be any competition at /rolling (unlike XIV where on top of having a shit drop rate, lot of people are 7/7 jobs and you have to fight for whatever drops with at least 2 or 3 players which lower the chance to get your loot).

You can attempt a specific dungeon once every 24 hour max, but nothing prevent you to run 4 different dungeons a day. Meaning that in average, you get one guaranteed drop per day when you start gearing up. The pace will slow down a bit when you will only need 1 or 2 piece of armor (meaning that you will only do runs for the 1-2 dungeons you need).

Oh yeah, on top of armor drop, you get tokens. And you can use them to acquire piece of armor directly from NPC. It would take long to have enough token to buy Tier 2 equipment, roughly 1 month, still. That's enough to buy that very last piece of armor set you were missing.

I got my full Tier 2 set in about a month. Then T3 (Raid) was barely an improvement over T2, so why even bother (and 8-mans was dropping the same thing as 16-mans)? Nothing was even balanced in Raid yet, so I did like many, I left...

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The biggest mistake of Bioware was to listen to the community when it came to fixing the game. Stupid things that didn't require any fix were changed, while important things were overlooked.

It sounds like EN forums sometime with "PETITION FOR [...]" everywhere. Players think that because they pay $12 a month they are entitled to give orders to game designers. I am glad sometime SE do their own things, even if the community is complaining. While some complaints are off course legitimate, it doesn't mean that they should always be taken in consideration.

Typical example that comes in mind are the low drop rate. If XIV had SWTOR like drop rate, we wouldn't even be here anymore to talk, because we would all have left.

(In b4 : "B.. But! I don't play for the drops! I play for fun!!". That's not true for most of players, you don't do Primals because they're fun after 50 wins, but because you want your weapon. Same with dungeons. Same with just anything...)

I hope 2.0 will remain the way SE wants it to be and not the way some minority on forums wants it to be.

[DNO]

*wavies* hello. I enjoy a bit of the 'grinding' xp, as it's a great way to chat with people in XP parties and perfect some of the finer aspects of your job. Although I am thinking mostly of FFXI pre-COP era XP.

If anybody thinks beating a crab 1 million times trains you for primal battles, and other endgame content then they are silly. Doing actual endgame content is the best an only way to get good at it.

[Eekiki]

You certainly didn't play SWTOR then

As a matter of fact, I did play SWTOR. My account is still active, even, since I made the mistake of plunking down money for a 6-month subscription. I stopped playing it for exactly the reason you mention. The best part of it is the level grind.

There is another game that has a very well designed level grind, but it isn't an MMORPG so it doesn't get considered, even though it plays like an MMO: Xenoblade Chronicles. Even though the game is very linear, the main scenario quests and the hundreds of sidequests are designed in such a way that you will fully explore the game's world. It's great.

XIV comes close to this, but it misses the mark because the main scenario quests were designed to be completable by DoH/DoL classes, so you can finish them without actually doing anything (thus missing a fine opportunity for EXP gains from combat situations). There also aren't enough of them.

What Asiaine said about level grinding in Zilart-era XI is also true, but for XIV to match that magic it needs to make forming a PT a lot easier.

[Murugan]

If anybody thinks beating a crab 1 million times trains you for primal battles, and other endgame content then they are silly. Doing actual endgame content is the best an only way to get good at it.

It teaches you to hold aggro as a tank, deal efficient damage as a DD, and heal a party as a healer. These are all things that your average player does not do as well as they could(should). So yes it does train you to do endgame content, and since MMO's have moved away from the party-leveling model the quality of your average player at cap has dropped significantly.

I'd take a person who truly knew how to play their role in a group for endgame content over someone with ten million hours logged dodging magma and other ridiculous gimmicks in WoW or FFXIV any day.

[Antipika]

As a matter of fact, I did play SWTOR. My account is still active, even, since I made the mistake of plunking down money for a 6-month subscription. I stopped playing it for exactly the reason you mention. The best part of it is the level grind.

My bad then, but why your answer make it sound the other way ? (I also made the mistake of paying 3 months and playing only ~2 months (+30 days free))

[Taika]

*wavies* hello. I enjoy a bit of the 'grinding' xp, as it's a great way to chat with people in XP parties and perfect some of the finer aspects of your job. Although I am thinking mostly of FFXI pre-COP era XP.

I'm with Shayla here, I do enjoy leveling up my job(s) to cap, and I'd prefer if it would take me some time. For me it's about the journey, not in a hurry to get to the end of it.

I think that's one of the issues I have with the "modern day MMORPG(-player)s": people think the "real game" is the instanced end game content, not exploring the world (or just being part of it) and having spontaneous adventures.

[Eekiki]

I'm with Shayla here, I do enjoy leveling up my job(s) to cap, and I'd prefer if it would take me some time. For me it's about the journey, not in a hurry to get to the end of it.

I think that's one of the issues I have with the "modern day MMORPG(-player)s": people think the "real game" is the instanced end game content, not exploring the world (or just being part of it) and having spontaneous adventures.

Yes, yes. This is the point I was trying to make. Those people that rushed to 50 in SWTOR skipped all that story because "It's all about endgame" these days.

Take a look at history, early FFXI and WoW had no endgame...for quite awhile, in fact. For over a year, FFXI's "endgame" was the Shadow Lord, a battle that yielded no drops. WoW had Blackrock Spire, which was considered endgame merely because it was the highest level instance. There was no Dynamis, no Icecrown. Yet they succeeded because the grind was more than just a grind back then. You were exploring the world, meeting other players, building a community.

That last bit has actually proven to be detrimental to XIV, because a lot of us have played XI, and most of us have stayed with our LS mates from Vana'diel. This has caused some fragmentation in the community, since many LSs had exclusive membership. We're slowly recovering from that, though.

[Molly_Millions]

You could only have 1 LS in XI, so all LSes were exclusive.

[TheVedis]

You could only have 1 LS in XI, so all LSes were exclusive.

um....wrong

you could only have 1 equipped at a time, you could have multiple