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Star Wars: The Old Republic |OT2| In a F2Play galaxy far, far away
- Thread starter Cystm
- Start date
Looks like testing the waters for an expansion. Personally, the content looks too thin for me to purchase anything other than the $9.99 bundle deal if I were playing at the time.
If this is selling incremental patches for dough then I think somebody better get their flame shield on because it's gonna be a rough ride.
The patch is to give features that pretty much every MMO in the last 4 years had by default. With the budget behind the game I would love to know why they chose an unfinished engine which is turning out to be their downfall.
I cannot stress how much I hate the Hero engine and would not even look at another game that uses it
Was there any "better" benefits in the other price points? I saw none, but removed material from the 9.99.
Last Hearth
Member
Yeah that survey is weird, the $9.99 had the most stuff. That's the bundle that should be $29.99.
No, I don't think so. Basically it started with the bonanza bundle at an amazing price point. Then it removed features and upped the price.
It's probably to see at what price point would certain features really sell. So, the $ 9.99 is the base with everything included, and then they remove features and up the price to see what people will buy at what point. You then use those metrics to determine what you need to work on to get enough people to buy at the price point you want to sell at.
You can tell because later on there are variations of bundles with different head start times, char slots, and features. So they are tweaking the variables to see what is really interesting to the player base.
No imgur behind a firewall. Still can't read that.
It's 14 pages long, so I'll just give you the first page and then a summary of the extra pages.
It then goes on to remove/add features and then ask you if you'd buy this, in groups of 3. For 14 pages this continues, they tweak the price and the features (example, 3 levels instead of 5, no ewok, ect, ect...).
BattleMonkey
Member
So that is perhaps the survey given out to focus groups recently?
I mean the price isn't bad since it includes 3 months of game time..... but meh they should just be giving it to players for free as part of theirs subs. But seeing the way all of it is worded, it seems to just be info gathering.
Seems to confirm though the Cathar are going to be made playable.
If anyone does this survey and doesn't choose the $9.99 package..... all the other packages are crap and give you less for your money pretty much. The first page $9.95 package is the obvious best one, especially because of the 90 days of game time. Anyone doing the survey should put "NO" for everything but that first page package.
I mean the price isn't bad since it includes 3 months of game time..... but meh they should just be giving it to players for free as part of theirs subs. But seeing the way all of it is worded, it seems to just be info gathering.
Seems to confirm though the Cathar are going to be made playable.
If anyone does this survey and doesn't choose the $9.99 package..... all the other packages are crap and give you less for your money pretty much. The first page $9.95 package is the obvious best one, especially because of the 90 days of game time. Anyone doing the survey should put "NO" for everything but that first page package.
This is just the bonanza bundle. Most of the following pages have less content and are sold at a higher price point. I'm still not 100 percent sure what to think about this, mostly because the content reads a lot like a amalgamation of the leaked future patch notes. It's a bit premature to say what their motives are for releasing this survey, however, so I'll hold off judgement for now.
Which is cool, I was hoping for them to be. Though it sort of further kills me desire to level alts right now. Because if I can be a human now or a Cathar later, I'll wait.
BattleMonkey
Member
Eh? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4435219#edit4435219
Didn't hear anything on the net yet but it sounds like folks are being let go. With the end of it talking about presenting stuff to the players, perhaps it goes along with the survey in how they plan on selling content packs?
Didn't hear anything on the net yet but it sounds like folks are being let go. With the end of it talking about presenting stuff to the players, perhaps it goes along with the survey in how they plan on selling content packs?
HarryDemeanor
Member
I wonder who they let go.
HOPEFULLY EVERYONE SLOWING DOWN THE CONTENT
He already left to work on Elder Scrolls Online.
BattleMonkey
Member
Georg Zoeller please
I didn't think Elder Scrolls online could be less appealing to me until I heard their engine choice -_-
HarryDemeanor
Member
So far apparently Marcel Hatam, the German CM, has been confirmed to be part of the layoffs.
I got that from the SWTOR forums. Guess someone saw it on his twitter page.
I got that from the SWTOR forums. Guess someone saw it on his twitter page.
To be honest, all my friends and I would still be playing this game if it had one thing: solid ranked PvP. Ranked anything keeps people logging in week in and week out, and if you pair that with solid MMO features like dual spec, LFR, LFG, AND THEN legacy; you've got a long term formula for keeping people attached. The game launched missing all these features with promises of "they're coming, they're coming," but half of them have simply disappeared off the radar. Legacy on it's own does not keep me playing, and it seems like BW banked it all on legacy.
If the only solution now is, "reroll on fatman;" I'll pass. I spent over 200 hours levelling two 50s, not going to do that again.
P.S. Jamews if you read this thread send me your diablo tag nerd!!! you never log onto steam
If the only solution now is, "reroll on fatman;" I'll pass. I spent over 200 hours levelling two 50s, not going to do that again.
P.S. Jamews if you read this thread send me your diablo tag nerd!!! you never log onto steam
FieryBalrog
Member
That first $10 bundle is a ridiculous value, if they went with something like that obviously everyone would buy it (3 months for 10 bucks PLUS all the content?) But then they're basically cutting off their $15/month entirely in favor of a lot less money. There's no way that goes live.
I don't even know why they put it in the survey, it seems to me like it would poison the well for all the other bundle options which look 100x less attractive. Like the next possible bundle they show which costs $30 with no gametime and a lot less features?
I don't even know why they put it in the survey, it seems to me like it would poison the well for all the other bundle options which look 100x less attractive. Like the next possible bundle they show which costs $30 with no gametime and a lot less features?
What's a bonanza bundle, is that marketing speak for "haha, look at this ludicrously amazing deal, suckers!"
BattleMonkey
Member
Doubt the 10 buck bundle would happen, but something similar but a little pricier would still be a decent deal. But segmenting the userbase is not a good thing if your going to hold back group content from folks. What do subscribers who don't buy these packs get? No new content for them? So why are they paying a sub?
No different than a normal expansion. I think the $10 model is really interesting, but I bet the 3 months for free thing is what will change.
Francois424
Neo Member
Yeah 10 bucks for 3 months of playtime AND 3 more character slots ? That's a win for me; regardless of the other junk that's in there (Ewok companion? what's next, Jar jar Binks to replace the ship's droid ?).
- The only species I am remotely interested in playing is Togruta (no surprise there, seeing my avatar), but it isn't there. Maybe more exotic, weird one if they ever add that.
- 5 more levels... Dunno what to think about that really. As FFXI pointed out over the years (until recently that is) Content > Levels, as we were stuck at 75 for like 5 years; but we had so much stuff to go thru.
Still better than nothing, especially with that price tag. They'd keep me as a player for 3 more months with that for sure. Hopefully this isn't just kind of "Joke".
Always found it bad taste when game companies do that, heh.
This really rubs me as "F2P" packs, where you get to play what you pay for. And I hope I am wrong with that tought.
- The only species I am remotely interested in playing is Togruta (no surprise there, seeing my avatar), but it isn't there. Maybe more exotic, weird one if they ever add that.
- 5 more levels... Dunno what to think about that really. As FFXI pointed out over the years (until recently that is) Content > Levels, as we were stuck at 75 for like 5 years; but we had so much stuff to go thru.
Still better than nothing, especially with that price tag. They'd keep me as a player for 3 more months with that for sure. Hopefully this isn't just kind of "Joke".
Always found it bad taste when game companies do that, heh.
This really rubs me as "F2P" packs, where you get to play what you pay for. And I hope I am wrong with that tought.
BattleMonkey
Member
They still need to provide a reason for people to pay a sub with new features/content. Most expansions are big in nature to get what you pay for, but a whole bunch of little content packs are just going to hurt by segmenting the population too much.
Last Hearth
Member
Why would anyone not buy it? $10 for 3 month of subscription is a bargain even without any additional content, why would you not buy it and continue to pay your $15 a month subscription?
BattleMonkey
Member
Well perhaps they should do it though. Still sell the actual game, but make it not require subs anymore, and sell content packs like this. It would fix the population problems at least
Heck maybe the whole pricing thing is just being tossed in there to see what people are willing to pay and whether maybe going F2P would be for the best.
I play an Assassin, and the Darkness (left) tree is by far the preferred spec. It has lots of AOE and utility, ridiculous self-healing, Force Pull, and with 10 points in Madness (right tree) can do lots of damage as well. Every time I've tried to switch to Deception or Madness I've felt far less useful and effective, even though in PvP I run in mainly DPS gear.
Well, if you look at it from the context of taking the survey in a closed room with a focus group, then the first one question is the lead into the remainder of the questions. It says:
1) Here's all the stuff we might do;
2) Here's the lowest possible value we could ever see ourselves asking;
3) Isn't this great?
It's basically a question to establish what they are asking about and to weed out a group of people who wouldn't honestly answer the survey -- if you say "no" to this deal then it's unlikely that you'd be back to playing SWToR ever.
From there, the questions add and remove features and change the price to see what they can realistically charge people for said content. Assuming they are honest actors, then people rationally choose which features appeal to them at what price. For example, there's the exact same feature-set listed later on in the survey but at $ 39.99. They ask: would you be willing to pay $ 40.00 for what we asked you to pay $ 9.99 for earlier? If you are comparing the 2, then the answer would be hell no, but that's not the question, exactly. The question is: if you were given this description and this feature-set, would you pay $ 40.00. That's also why they group them up in sets of 3, so you can compare 3 similar sets and make a decision on which is most attractive.
Last Hearth
Member
I'd pay $30 for it because I'd just consider it a 3 month sub deal with extra bonus
BattleMonkey
Member
The listed info is pretty small for an expansion, this is more like a dlc/content pack. I agree it's bad idea, but if they give game time along with it, then it's not that bad.
HarryDemeanor
Member
Sucks to see Stephen Reid laid off.
Wow... so I decided to finish off my datacrons finally, and waited patiently for the stupid Tatooine balloon ride, only to decide I wanted my companion to join me aboard the balloon and be promptly spawned on the ground after summoning them. So pissed off.
Time to take a break.
Time to take a break.
Oh nooooo.
Wtf. Fire people that actually deserve it.
kyo_daikun
Member
Damn, I kinda liked him from his posts and he was a fellow brit, hope the game doesnt hit another downward spiral after this news.
Wow, that really surprises me. I liked him, hope he lands on his feet soon.
Have a class with force push get you onto the sandcrawler. That's what I did.
Yep, ended up doing this after waiting for another pass of the balloon only to have it DISAPPEAR meters away from the boarding spot. Was much easier and more fun.
Out of all the people they have had at their events, this was the only guy that had any charm. James Ohlen is a souless robot compared to Reid.
But, that said, their PR department as a whole makes Ohlen look like Neil deGrasse Tyson.