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

[Nix]

I think before ME3, SWTOR had lost about 400,000 subs>< so if that is true Darkvalkyr, then that is pretty crazy D:

[Asiaine]

Wow (teehee) lots of discussions here. Please allow me to offer my understanding:

SW:TOR ran into problem: It took a great premise (Bioware rich stories) and tried to make it a continuous world. A Bioware game takes years to make, and is consumed in a month. To keep people happy they would have to deliver years worth of content every month. This is not feasible. Therefore they add filler content. The filler content is not sufficient to keep people happy.

Therefore the recipe is unlikely to be successful.

What SE (and everyone else) has to keep in mind is: People don't want a WoW clone. WoW is already out there. If someone implemented a 100% clone of WoW it would not do well. WoW is doing well because it *IS* WoW. It's name is enough to draw in and keep people.

What SE (and anyone else) should do is be themselves. Leverage their strongest assets. What is Final Fantasy's assets that make it stand out from all else?
-- An engrossing world through which to traverse
-- Beautiful music and graphics
-- Amazing cutscenes and storylines
-- Strong RPG elements (mechanics).

SW had a few but not all of those. WoW had a few but not all of those. FF has all of those and needs to focus on these pillars. Do not be a clone: Copy Cat Groups never live long.

[Ruisu]

SW:TOR ran into problem: It took a great premise (Bioware rich stories).

Wh..what? Bioware hasn't seen this since 2008. All of their recent games have been garbage, storywise. The fact that they were selling their game solely on this, and voice acting was a huge red flag. At least Square Enix admits their mistakes, and is making a completely new game. Hell, at least FFXIV at launch was original, even if in a bad way. SWTOR was unoriginal, and shit.

[Colino]

I would disagree with WoW cloning being SWTOR's biggest fall. I think it's one of the many reasons, but it's definitely not the only one.

I could go on and on but IMO the biggest problem was Bioware/EA's absolute defiance of customer feedback. When the game was full of problems they never cared until they really started bleeding subs everywhere.

[Amherst]

in depth storylines

You obviously weren't playing as a Smuggler.

[Eard]

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.

this^

MMORPG is a world.

[Duelle]

SW:TOR ran into problem: It took a great premise (Bioware rich stories) and tried to make it a continuous world. A Bioware game takes years to make, and is consumed in a month. To keep people happy they would have to deliver years worth of content every month. This is not feasible. Therefore they add filler content. The filler content is not sufficient to keep people happy.

This is a fair point.

What SE (and everyone else) has to keep in mind is: People don't want a WoW clone. WoW is already out there. If someone implemented a 100% clone of WoW it would not do well. WoW is doing well because it *IS* WoW. It's name is enough to draw in and keep people.

There's a difference between straight out copying WoW and drawing inspiration from WoW and giving things your own twist so that they make sense in your setting/IP. FFXI drew from EQ and gave it its own twist, in a way. The same rule applies here; look at games like WoW do, draw on what works, change things to make it fit your setting and move on. This can be applied to lots of things, from party dynamics to additional things like pet battles or transmogrification.

Strong RPG elements (mechanics).

I'll disagree. Mechanics-wise FF has been very weak. XI alone proved that many of the ideas from the console games simply didn't work in an MMORPG. Thief, Red Mage and Summoner being the poster children of that.

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.

The point of having multiple difficulties is so that the e-peen brigade's feelings don't get hurt when the dirty casuals get to clear the content and see how the story ends. Freshness has nothing to do with that approach to design. The only thing I wish developers would use is mid-encounter triggers for hard modes rather than an on/off button.

[Nix]

You obviously weren't playing as a Smuggler.

Awww I really enjoyed the smuggler storyline, I loved hunting Skavak and getting Flashy back haha D:

The point of having multiple difficulties is so that the e-peen brigade's feelings don't get hurt when the dirty casuals get to clear the content and see how the story ends. Freshness has nothing to do with that approach to design. The only thing I wish developers would use is mid-encounter triggers for hard modes rather than an on/off button.

To me the hardmode felt more like a cop-out "Hey, we can't think of other content for you guys to tackle right now, so just try this same thing just at a harder difficulty (yay!)"
Your opinion is a nice take on it too, honestly I'd not thought of it from that perspective♪

[Risae]

I hope you all realize that Yoshi is actually taking the WoW route.

[DeadRiser]

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.

Don't get me wrong, I love moving in combat. I just like the idea of planting yourself in the ground for a short amount of time to do crazy damage. It makes sense. Like for Ifrit. You watch what he does and when you think it's safe, you use one of your weaponskills to do crazy damage.