Yeah you know cause thats the only way to make revenue is off retail and not you know subs.
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Star Wars: The Old Republic |OT| EA: "Let's blow this thing and go home!"
- Thread starter Emitan
- Start date
Yeah you know cause thats the only way to make revenue is off retail and not you know subs.
BW had to hire so many engineers to keep the Hero Engine running that they make no money from subs. They have to constantly keep selling new boxed copies.
chickdigger802
Banned
Can't even imagine how many hamsters are setup in parallel to keep this funky game rolling.
And they definitely need a few more
cpp_is_king
Member
It's possible you're being facetious, but I believe the profit margin on 2-3 months of subscription for 1 person (factoring in server / maintenance costs for that 1 person) is roughly equal to the profit margin from 1 boxed copy sale (factoring in distribution costs / vendor costs, etc)
Either way it'll take a long time to recoup the initial investment, but where did you get $1b from? The highest number I've ever seen thrown around is $500m, and even that's probably quite a stretch.
This hurts.
Going from the 4th most populated server as an Empire to the 50th most populated as a Republic.
My old WOW guild is on that server with 3 50's and aren't likely to reroll.
I chose the 4th most populated for myself and a real life friend, got to 25, but he's going to unsub probably.
I'm also switching from East to West and I'm in the East. Already see a rise in Ping.
Going from the 4th most populated server as an Empire to the 50th most populated as a Republic.
My old WOW guild is on that server with 3 50's and aren't likely to reroll.
I chose the 4th most populated for myself and a real life friend, got to 25, but he's going to unsub probably.
I'm also switching from East to West and I'm in the East. Already see a rise in Ping.
This. I knew absolutely no one on my current server, and simply picked it during early access because it seemed active.
Despite the server not being as active anymore (seemingly), the guild I joined is full of great guys, who all have top 200 raiding experience. Been really enjoyable thus far.
Yeah, I started having these freezes right after the maint & mini patch the other day. Seems it's been happening to many other people as well, looking at the swtor forum.
chickdigger802
Banned
happens to me randomly during combat and taxi rides since pretty much the beginning.
Not so great during combat... because it seems like if you are lagging, your companion does jack shit. Mobs have the most dangerous CC in the game
Last Hearth
Member
The freezes is what the emergency maintenance is about tonight.
I have a some what stupid question, are Blaster Rifles/Assault Cannons basically like lightsaber/vibrosword choices for weapons for their class? I really don't like carrying around a big AC, I'd rather rock a BR. I haven't came across a single quest reward for a BR, so I was curious.
cpp_is_king
Member
Blaster Rifle rewards are rare. I see them most often from Heroic 4s, but even then it's not that common. Commendations can be a good way to get them. If you do all the heroics one each planet, generally you'll get at least 1 BR to upgrade yours.
That being said, I'm not sure what the other difference are per se.
In other news, I hit 50 about 10 minutes before server shutdown tonight and promptly proceeded to the GTN to see what kind of purples I could buy for myself. I was amazed at the massive number of abilities I was able to train just by hitting that 1 level. Seemed like every single ability was trainable.
Just went back to questing after a couple weeks off of the game, and there's 14 people on Tattoine. 14! This is on Keller's Void too. Man, what happened?
They ought to just disable the Heroic Questgivers if there aren't more than 50 people in a zone. It's irritating as hell to sit through all the quest dialogue, then finally accept the mission....only to realize you have no hope of completing it since it'd take 25% of the planet's population to get it done.
We're only a month after launch and I worry that I've really missed the initial leveling curve, and it's only going to be more barren planets until I get to 50.
They ought to just disable the Heroic Questgivers if there aren't more than 50 people in a zone. It's irritating as hell to sit through all the quest dialogue, then finally accept the mission....only to realize you have no hope of completing it since it'd take 25% of the planet's population to get it done.
We're only a month after launch and I worry that I've really missed the initial leveling curve, and it's only going to be more barren planets until I get to 50.
lol at the official forums:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=262052
This is actually a 2-3 hour maintenance tonight right?
Edit: Oh wait it's not Tuesday, oh well.
It's great that it can still be done. Rolling alone and making good friends that is.
Server population usually doesn't matter if you have people you're playing with I'm just worried about Republic vs. Empire and getting flashpoints since I'll be playing at night.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=262052
Delusional or trolling.
This is actually a 2-3 hour maintenance tonight right?
Edit: Oh wait it's not Tuesday, oh well.
I've played WoW with them on and off for 7 years.. so.. don't really want to choose a better server over them.
It's great that it can still be done. Rolling alone and making good friends that is.
Server population usually doesn't matter if you have people you're playing with I'm just worried about Republic vs. Empire and getting flashpoints since I'll be playing at night.
It never happened to me before (if there's one real positive about the game I could have said, is that it ran perfectly, no freezes/crashes), while now I get it when idling or starting a conversation or sitting in my ship or fighting etc etc.
It's a weird freeze as well, since the mouse still works and the audio does as well.
Well, that's fantastic! I was hoping they'd fix it fast, but I didn't think they'd do it so fast. Kudos.
jaundicejuice
Member
I've made the mistake of trying to play with as many friends as possible and currently have a decent Sith Warrior on an East Coast server while I live on the West. The average latency, about 100, is tolerable, it's the frequent 10k lag spikes and DC's that aren't. It's gotten to the point where I'm going to wait for the character transfer (when is that planned for btw, any word?) and bring that character over to a west coast sever where I regularly play with two friends as opposed to the six I barely play with on the east coast server. It's not worth it.
cpp_is_king
Member
Next time if I'm on i'll run you through it. But yea, I usually shout in fleet, but it doesn't always work.
jaundicejuice
Member
Is there any word on when character transfers will be possible?
cpp_is_king
Member
None at all so far. Your guess is as good as anyone's
jaundicejuice
Member
*sigh* Fuck it, I'll re-roll the Sith on a west coast server. I'm not making a new character until I hit lvl 50 with one of them.
I'm not even bothering with running dungeons until they come up with some better way of finding group members. Sitting in General Chat all night begging people to help just feels so 2006.
Haven't noticed any crashes or lag spikes, but I'm only on the starting planet. I'll monitor that.
I think people analyzed that it would probably kill servers if they added transfers anytime soon. They would greatly benefit me and I hope they come but I guess it's true. I never had any regrets xfering around WoW a lot. Too much time investment in my chars.
See that's the thing. Took me an hour on the 4th most populated server as Empire and now I'm messing around on the 50th with repub.
FUUU
Might just do what border said.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
I don't know why they didn't make a cut scene shuttle ride down to the planet or to the fleet the loading screen. It's like Mass Effect elevators 2.0.
I might join a dungeon group if I see someone in General Chat asking for members and they already have a healer/tank.....but screw waiting around for groups to form when not even a character's class is indicative of what role they might play. You can't just go down the list of characters PM'ing people based on their class since every class has a viable DPS build. The lack of versatile talent builds and the hybrid penalty actually helped WOW in the early days, since you were pretty much guaranteed that any warrior was a tank and any priest was a healer.
I know EA really wanted to get this thing out, but if feels like a huge mistake to have shipped without a proper Dungeon Finder (and to a lesser extent, having shipped without Dual Spec options). Given what a hassle it is to get a group together, I don't see what motivation there is for anyone leveling to spec into a tank/healer role. I have a tank-capable class, but I'm not even going to look at that talent tree until I hit 50. I don't mind maintaining 2 sets of gear for DPS and tanking, but I'll be damned if I'm going to eat a re-spec fee and have to manually reset my talents just so I can get dungeon group. The far-reaching effect of this is that you'll see a bunch of level 50 tanks and healers who don't even know how to tank or heal because they never bothered to do it while leveling.
Bioware seems really interested in pumping out more group content, but I don't see the point in it if they can't give people the tools to facilitate playing the group content. They need to stop making new Flashpoints until there's better options for putting a group together.
I know EA really wanted to get this thing out, but if feels like a huge mistake to have shipped without a proper Dungeon Finder (and to a lesser extent, having shipped without Dual Spec options). Given what a hassle it is to get a group together, I don't see what motivation there is for anyone leveling to spec into a tank/healer role. I have a tank-capable class, but I'm not even going to look at that talent tree until I hit 50. I don't mind maintaining 2 sets of gear for DPS and tanking, but I'll be damned if I'm going to eat a re-spec fee and have to manually reset my talents just so I can get dungeon group. The far-reaching effect of this is that you'll see a bunch of level 50 tanks and healers who don't even know how to tank or heal because they never bothered to do it while leveling.
Bioware seems really interested in pumping out more group content, but I don't see the point in it if they can't give people the tools to facilitate playing the group content. They need to stop making new Flashpoints until there's better options for putting a group together.
Alex
Member
At cap, I think it's fine, but for leveling it's going to become obnoxious. It's WoW-like nature is sadly only built for fringe co-operation and to rush to cap mentality. The legacy system will help, possibly, if it goes far enough and isn't fluff but there's more they could have done and I wish others would do in order to spot painting end game as something you're supposed to rush to.
But in general, it (LFD) is probably needed. Preferably without the ill effects on content and design that turned WoW into a piece of shit though. =/ I'm still annoyed by all of that nonsense that a good developer like Blizzard pulled in recent years.
As for elite quests, I love 'em, and I'd never want them turned off because I only play in a duo (you can duo any 4x quest if you're decent at games) but I realize most folks don't necessarily have that privilege so there probably just should be a scaling option built in. Or again, stop making a few strands of elite quests and make an entire elite mode that is built for 2-4x scaling group leveling. Solo-encouraged leveling is by far number one on my shit list for modern MMO design. If I want to play solo I will play a fucking offline game.
But in general, it (LFD) is probably needed. Preferably without the ill effects on content and design that turned WoW into a piece of shit though. =/ I'm still annoyed by all of that nonsense that a good developer like Blizzard pulled in recent years.
As for elite quests, I love 'em, and I'd never want them turned off because I only play in a duo (you can duo any 4x quest if you're decent at games) but I realize most folks don't necessarily have that privilege so there probably just should be a scaling option built in. Or again, stop making a few strands of elite quests and make an entire elite mode that is built for 2-4x scaling group leveling. Solo-encouraged leveling is by far number one on my shit list for modern MMO design. If I want to play solo I will play a fucking offline game.
I get what you're saying, but man I remember in early FF11 (Dunno if it ever changed), you needed a whole group to take down a basic trash mob like a crab, lol.
I'll say. I'm fine for a mix, but the majority should be group oriented content.
Alex
Member
FFXI, without the teeth-pulling group formation, would be a good goal(in terms of group dynamics) if it were modernized...Which is what we all wanted from FFXIV :lol What a mess...
Anyhow, scaling for specific group sizes (ie: I want to play with my wife/friend/whatever and no randoms for awhile, etc) and options for inter-server matchmaking for leveling would be awesome, as would designing in co-operative attacks and other neat elements you could do with an assumed persistent group.
Still, I'm not trying to rain fire and brimstone on the entire concept of solo, sometimes solo is good and you should always be able to handle certain things on your own I just think it should be the fringe option, where as it's the other way around currently, which makes even less sense considering once you hit cap you need a group anyway.
SWTOR was at least a nice step back to having some elite quests, some good co-op bits, some challenging mobs that would actually kill you if you flubbed it up, which is all like ambrosia to me after leveling in Cataclysm, but I do wish it went that extra mile.
Anyhow, scaling for specific group sizes (ie: I want to play with my wife/friend/whatever and no randoms for awhile, etc) and options for inter-server matchmaking for leveling would be awesome, as would designing in co-operative attacks and other neat elements you could do with an assumed persistent group.
Still, I'm not trying to rain fire and brimstone on the entire concept of solo, sometimes solo is good and you should always be able to handle certain things on your own I just think it should be the fringe option, where as it's the other way around currently, which makes even less sense considering once you hit cap you need a group anyway.
SWTOR was at least a nice step back to having some elite quests, some good co-op bits, some challenging mobs that would actually kill you if you flubbed it up, which is all like ambrosia to me after leveling in Cataclysm, but I do wish it went that extra mile.
With the amount of time investment in leveling, group leveling is a very hard to coordinate.
Having a hard mode for every quest would be very niche.
The only thing that makes sense is rather than having 4-5 group quests on a planet... to have like 15-20 that could scale down to one player like you said. Then you wait to do them if you're leveling while your friend isn't.
But I still envision a future MMO where level 1's could do a lot of stuff with high levels, but I'm not sure how I'd go about it.
Don't even bother with that unless you have at least 8 people.
Also bring a sage or two to pull people because /stuck is bugged and either doesn't reset you properly anymore or bugs out.
Alex
Member
If you could pile into a matchmaker like WoW and quest like that would it really be any worse than dungeons, though? Most folks I played WoW with pretty much spammed LFD for leveling, anyhow. I know I did after a first pass.
Toss in some options like scaling difficulty/rewards so you don't need a full group, make content more fun to repeat with less traveling (I think we all want this now as is :lol) and more combat, make stuff like Legacy have a big niche in the game so it's not about just rushing to end then make solo a fringe option within all of that with companions and slower/more careful progression.
Not to say that is what this game should be at all, that's just my ideal, personally. I just miss the good ol' days of group based leveling and would like to see a stab at it with modern tools.
I don't think they need to go as far a WoW did (enabling cross-server grouping, completely automating the process like it's a Battleground queue). But at the bare minimum, I need to be able to find people that are looking for the same dungeons/quests I am, and a way to see what role(s) those people are capable of playing. In Burning Crusade and early Lich King I could at least tell the game what dungeon I wanted to do and then see a list of other people on my server that also wanted to do it. Thanks to the hybrid penalties and limited talent trees you could pretty much be certain of someone's role just by knowing their class (not so in SWTOR). It wasn't that great, but it's light years ahead of spamming General chat channels.
I haven't really kept up to date on Bioware interviews, but it at least seems like they aren't even talking about this stuff. That's bothersome.
More worrying though is what I mentioned earlier -- I'm questing through mid-level zones and seeing less than 20 people online. I don't even see the point in asking for a group with populations so low. This might be where the transparency they've offered really hurts the game. In WOW you had to use /who to actively seek out a piece of information like how many players are in your zone. I rarely did that so I'd often harbor (perhaps false) hopes of finding companions for a group quest or dungeon. In SWTOR, the player count just sits there ever-present in your UI, always reminding you of how hopeless the situation is. At the end of the day having 20 players on Tattooine versus 20 players in Arathi Highlands is not that different. The difference is that the people in Arathi at least had hope of finding a group because they didn't know the player count, which made them more likely to reach out the the chat channels. When I see the pathetic player counts on Tattooine I don't even bother to ask if anyone wants to do a Heroic quest. More than that, I just completely ignore the chat channel because I don't expect anyone else will be asking for questmates.....so even if another player were to do so, I probably wouldn't even see it.
Agreed. It's not even the type of traveling where I can go afk like flight paths in WoW. The flight paths in SWTOR are short (which is good) but then the actual on foot traveling takes freaking ages.
Travel definitely needs to be automated more. If you wanted to go from one end of the world to the other in WoW you could at least walk away from the computer for 15 minutes (or alt-tab into your browser and watch some YouTube). But in SWTOR going from one zone to another requires you to manually control your character and designate desitinations multiple times. You can't walk away or tab out because you know that at some point you'll need to guide your toon through some bottleneck.
And sweet jesus the spaceports! For some bizarre reason you can't even use your mount or your quick travel option inside them....so not only must you manually guide your character to a taxi, but you have to do it at an excruciatingly low speed. I think most people would prefer to have longer travel times if at least meant they could do something else while traveling.
They really need to drop the whole spaceport system and just let you hop on your ship from designated towns. I really don't get the point of funneling people through travel channels at such a slow pace.
And sweet jesus the spaceports! For some bizarre reason you can't even use your mount or your quick travel option inside them....so not only must you manually guide your character to a taxi, but you have to do it at an excruciatingly low speed. I think most people would prefer to have longer travel times if at least meant they could do something else while traveling.
They really need to drop the whole spaceport system and just let you hop on your ship from designated towns. I really don't get the point of funneling people through travel channels at such a slow pace.
NemesisPrime
Banned
I think it was mainly due to (class) quest reasons.
I guess we will probably get a more streamlined system in the future, but yeah... being able to land near any major hub on a planet would be a good start.
they really need shuttles as a fast travel to planets. I honestly never want to do dailies because it's a 15 minute bullshit trip just to GET to them. fuck right off with that shit, bioware. and it would make me never want to help someone on a quest for the same reason.
money is free at cap, grats i just gave them a money sink. no need to pay me bioware.
oh, also remove spaceports. they serve no purpose other than to make me auto run, tab out, click a stupid button for another useless loading screen, tab out. say fuck it and go do something else.
this game was designed 10 years ago and never updated.
I'd hazard a guess that all those class quests could be successfully transferred to the new system. They want to instance the hangar itself anyway, just have them happen there. Allowing mounts inside the stations would be a nice quick fix as well.
There's way too many stupid time sinks in the game for 'immersion'. Half of the game looks like it was designed for a single player game, where you'd do the place once or twice per playthrough, not possibly daily like in an MMO...
this, it's driving me crazy , haven't done heroic quests again because of this, I dread the walking around
It's really not that bad. Perhaps it varies by server/class, but I never had to spend that much effort to run something. I do admit a separate LFG channel or tool makes an amazing amount of sense and is pretty inexcusable in 2012.
BattleMonkey
Member
I rather they not turn the game into a teleport fest like has happened to so many MMOs, but they do need to streamline alot of travel paths and give more quick options. Sell us planetary passes for quick travel like the fleet passes, allow mounts in space ports, remove the airlocks, allow us to choose between station/planet to load into, more fleet shuttle locations, players can summon other players to their instance, etc, etc. Just continually tweak this to speed up travel times.
And increase the speeds of our mounts. Heck just 10% boost on all three ranks would be nice little boost. And hoping they add even faster mounts eventually
Agree 100% with every single point you listed. I think one of the problems in finding groups for lower level flashpoints in the fleet is that people just dont want the hassle of spending the time to go to fleet with all the load screens and then having to do it all over again to get back to their questing.