Category Archives: SWTOR

Free to Play Foibles

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Since Rift is going F2P in June, quite a few people have voiced some concerns over the business model and the long term ramifications.  I think Wilhelm has the most sober approach to it all.  There are quite a few items I would like to discuss here that I think many people have either overlooked or simply not really thought much about.

A subscription game has a relatively assured income model.  You have X players you get X money.  As long as the playerbase is happy, you’re going to bring in money.  This part I don’t really get about RIFT since the quality has always been there but without Hartman at the helm, we all pretty much figured this was going to happen.  WoW makes about $50 million a month and can amortize/invest into future content development.  The thing about themeparks is that the developers determine the content and the players consume it.  Given WoW’s development cycle, you’re paying about $60-$100 per patch and then another $60 per expansion pack.  Take any other themepark F2P game and you can pay much, much less for content – sometimes nothing.  Sandboxes do not have this problem (hence UO still be subscription) and PvP games are pretty close to this.  This is rather clear if you take a step back from the actual game.

Where people tend to trip up a bit is two-fold.  First, a company needs to make money and people have to spend money.  I know, simple.  The thing about making money is that you have to consistently make it.  If you’re selling unlocks for an account, things that last forever, then after a while, people won’t be buying them if they’ve been there for a long time.  You need new players to buy that sort of stuff.  In order to make cash, you need to sell consumables.  In a level-based, gear-based system, what is consumable?  New content is one, but the price tag to develop it is high and you’re not sure to get the money back.  Character customizations work but again, unless you’re overwriting what was there before, you’re not going to have long term success.  Devs have yet to figure out this problem, instead they all rely on lockboxes, which is more or less gambling.

This is where it gets tricky.  As a general rule, people are stupid.  A person is smart, certainly.  Groups of people, in small enough quantities can show smarts – hence guilds.  Large groups, as is evident in any political circle, are as dumb as bricks – if not simply lemmings.  Neverwinter’s spam of who is successfully unlocking mounts in their gambling boxes invariably makes other people think “I can win too”.  Even the lottery is a tax on the stupid as you have a better chance to be hit by lightning twice before winning the lottery once.  People still buy dozens of tickets a week.

So you end up in the situation where developers have yet to find a consumable item that doesn’t make players feel like they are getting gouged (which is why we pay subscriptions right?) and resort to the lowest common denominator.  Which the public happily provides.

A third point that I need to bring up is the comparison to F2P in the Asian market.  The majority of those games are P2W, clearly.  And the majority only stay on the market for 12-18 months.  This is the polar opposite of the western F2P market.  For some reason I can’t yet figure out, our side of the ocean wants free games for years and years and years.  If you’re too cheap to pay 10$ a month for a F2P game, you shouldn’t complain that they are offering items to people who will.  If you’re unable to find things to buy at that price point, which I personally find issue with, then there’s simply a problem with the financial model of the game (*cough* SWTOR *cough*).

While I might think that RIFT could have continued for another 10 years with a subscription model, apparently they were getting enough feedback that F2P games were eating into their profits.  WoW is no different I’m sure.  Someone will have to make the tough decision of either guaranteed income and to weather the F2P storm while the market evolves or to jump into a pool of cannibalistic fish who will do everything to destroy their competition.

Is Free to Play here to stay?  Yes.  Is the current market deployment sustainable? No.  Did the exact same thing happen to subscriptions over the past 5 years?  Hell yes.

Dance the Dance

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After having played the recent Batman series, I have found a new love for the combat dance.  In my younger days, I played a lot of arcade fighters and usually held my own.  There was just one local guy who could really whoop me and I learned the combat dance from him.  The dance is a series of timed moves that work symbiotically with each other, in what can only be perceived as “what I was trying to do in the first place”.  In older games, this was called (and might still be) juggling.  Today, there’s a rhythm to most games that involve combat so that when you watch an elite player, they don’t so much memorize the buttons as they memorize the pattern of the buttons.

As there is a difference in complexity between the Waltz and the Tango, so true is it in combat games.  If memory serves, Paladins in WoW have had a longstanding tradition of horrible dances.  The 2-4-6 combo was a series of 3 attacks that you cycled continuously on end.  Hunters are the same.  Most SWTOR classes also suffer this simplistic formula and Rift often suffers from the 3 button macro effect. Some games, like StarCraft for example, have very complex combat patterns and require not only dexterity to accomplish it in short time frames but also the ability to adapt on the fly.

Back to the MMO world though, and the thought process behind generation and consumption in terms of combat.  Abilities are limited by 3 main things – time, resources and condition.  The first one is usually just a cooldown, preventing you from continuously spamming your most effective abilities.  The second can be a bit more complex.  Perhaps your character has a single energy pool, where abilities need a certain amount in order to activate.  More complex characters have a dual pool, where you need resources from two separate pools to do something – like Rogues, Energy and Combo Points.  The third type is where a set condition is required in order to activate an ability.  Say they need to be poisoned, or you need to be at a certain distance.  All this combines into a complexity ladder for a given character and in turn, the popularity of that character.

Look at WoW and the seemingly immense proliferation of Mages and Hunters.  Both have a single resource, little restrictions in terms of timed abilities and very limited conditional factors.  Both are all over the place.  Then look at Warlocks and Rogues.  They are extremely dependent on time (due to Damage over Time effects), multiple resources and plenty of conditional factors.  And that’s just DPS.  For tanks, with changes in Pandaria to an active mitigation – where you need to press buttons rather than stack stats – this means that the combat dance becomes ever more complex.  There are your buttons for attacking, your buttons for defending and your buttons for “oh my god”, all of which use the same complex resource management system of the base class.  Tanks not only have to understand  dance with a dozen more steps, they also need to pay more attention to the music to even be able to dance without falling down.

There’s certainly a balance to be had between a simple dance and a complex one.  In all honesty, I think all classes should have a basic, smooth dance that allows for a player to add complexities when needed.  Rift does the former but not much of the latter.  WoW doesn’t really do transition between the dances all that well – either it’s dumb easy or carpal tunnel syndrome complex.  I think concept of easy to play, difficult to master should be the baseline.  If the game metrics are showing that people are having a really hard time with a class structure, maybe it’s just time for a complete re-write.

SWTOR Expansion

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Back to the gaming discussion.  This week, Star Wars launched it’s new mini-expansion.  5 levels, 1 planet, a new raid and 2 new gear levels.  Every day this week, they had a blog post covering the class changes that the expansion brought.  Given that I had 3 of the 4 archetypes (I don’t like warriors for some reason), I was curious as to the whole of the changes.

At the time the game came out, I wrote a guide for the Sith Inquisitor – since taken over by another author.  I also spent a lot of time building combat models for both that class and the Bounty Hunter – specifically the Powertech tank.  I’ve always been fascinated with numbers and this was simply a decent outlet.  Something new and mathy.

The hiccup here was that even in beta, the developers didn’t have a solid understanding of numeric balance, or perhaps they didn’t have time.  There were a few basic stats.  Power (increased base damage), critical chance, surge (critical damage), alacrity (speed) and accuracy.  Typically in any RPG game, each stat has a value in relation to the others, depending on your class.  In a well-balanced game, every stat has value, but it might have diminishing.  In a less-balanced game, stats will have caps, where points above that give nothing.  In very poorly balanced games, some stats are completely worthless and others are the only thing you should ever seek.

TOR had this latter problem.  Alacrity caused you to attack faster but it didn’t increase resource generation.  In PvP it had minimal value but in PvE it was actually a penalty.  Accuracy also had issues, where after a small amount, like the amount on a single piece of gear, you were capped.  This left power, crit and surge.  At the time, you couldn’t get any item with those combinations.  Some classes were stuck with a single stat.  The worst part was that this was flagged on the forums in the beta and during live, with tangible solutions.

Well, I left after 2 months so I didn’t get to see some of the changes that came along.  What I did read this week though was the fix for alacrity and accuracy.  They now work in a logical fashion and no longer cap or cause a penalty.  I have to wonder why it took nearly 18 months for this fix but it’s there now.  At the same time I do understand that their focus has not been on end-game balance as there really isn’t a need for it.  Maybe the next set of large changes will address that part of the game.  It seems that the game finally has a solid RPG foundation in terms of numbers.

This is What Rage Looks Like

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Gamasutra has an article on the failings of SWTOR and specifically on the conversion to Free to Play.

I’ve covered this topic enough to really not need to add much to the material.  I agree with Simon’s argument but not so much with the tone.  The entire argument reads as a “/ragequit” forum posting where the salient points are covered with hyperbole.

Read 3 pages of this and just remember this.  SWTOR has made no improvements to the core game, simply added gates to the features.  So many gates that it really pushes people to subscribe (but not purchase more once subscribed).  Considering that the whole argument for moving to F2P was that subscriptions were a bad financial model, it begs the question.

Still, it’s worth a chuckle.

What A Dollar Gets You

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Syp has a good post on the F2P change for SWTOR.  The main argument is against the two main models of F2P – one that lets people play for free with add-ons paid for cash and another that provides huge restrictions and essentially works as a limited trial.

Rohan has a nice breakdown of the F2P components that bears repeating, where the main ones include:

  • Box
  • Access
  • Content
  • Cosmetic
  • Convenience
  • Power

The box is simple, access too.  Content can be pieced out, as Turbine does pretty well with DDO and LOTRO.  Cosmetic is the way for most Cryptic games, including most super hero variants.  Convenience speeds up portions of the game that are clearly tedious.  Faster mounts, bigger bags, experience potions et al.  Power is the most controversial but the most prominent in the F2P world of Asia.

TOR is clearly using Access, Cosmetic and Convenience as the main drivers for cash.  Content is simply much too expensive for TOR to sell piecemeal, what with the full voice over costs and high production values.  Power isn’t an option either as the pusback on this model in western games can destroy a game.

You are paying for access to raids and PvP and whatnot but the general agreement is that these portions are a much better value in other games.  The convenience issue is an interesting one.  There is no real challenge in TOR, at any given point.  1-50 can be completed, if slowly, for absolutely zero dollars.  For 20$, much less than anyone would pay for a box copy of a AAA single player game, gets you enough unlocks to may the game very playable.

Once you hit level 50 though, then it’s much less about convenience or access.  Nearly every single aspect of the game at that point is locked behind cash doors.  You need to pay to do anything, use the AH, truly craft or customize your character.  Heck, you need to pay to equip items.

Right now, you can buy KOTOR2 for 10$ (on sale for half for a few days), a game dating from nearly 8 years ago or you can pay 0 dollars for KOTOR3 that’s 1 year old.  If you only wanted the Single Player experience, I would say “good deal”.  If you’re looking for the social experience, I would say that the F2P option isn’t an option at all, subscription is the only way to go.

This essentially means that TOR is offering a free trial from 1-50, with the option to buy perks along the way.  Once you hit 50 though, it’s a subscription game like any other.

State of the Game Over

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Syp has a post up in regards to the PR spin that SWTOR is giving before the F2P launch.  I tend to agree with the majority of his observations though with a few additions of my own.

Format

When I first read it, I thought” holy wall of text Batman!”  Then I thought “finally a state of the game, 1 month shy of the 1 year anniversary”.  The next, “Jeff Hickman is running the boat now?  Hmmm”.  Still, the format is solid, a quick intro and followed by a few items with descriptors.  I’m thinking it took him all of an hour to write that out and wondering why it took so damn long for this type of contact to occur.  +1

Content

Saying you were EP of Warhammer Online is not something to brag about unless you can speak to a specific feature set/time period of work.  The only thing I could think of that would be worse is introducing yourself as Bill Roper.

The issues stated don’t make sense.  If your game was awesome, people would be playing it.  They aren’t leaving because of the subscription fee.  These two items cannot be exclusive.  Slow updates is also a weird one.  They are certainly slower than Rift but they are lightyears faster than WoW.  If you bring a quality product to the table, that offers a superior experience to the free variants, people WILL PAY YOU FOR IT.  Hate WoW as much as you want but it’s the reason it can charge for money.  It’s the reason Rift and EvE do too.  If you’re going F2P, then you’re admitting you do not have the quality of game you think people should pay for.  Turbine admitted it (LOTRO, DDO), Cryptic as well.

Losing Devs

Balls-on for talking about it.  Shame the reasons given are as reasonable as pixie dust.  You don’t lose the owners, the EP, 90% of the content leads and 30% of all the staff when things are peachy.  Normal cycle is one thing (say a 10-20% turnover rate) but you don’t lose 5 big names in a week.  Whether they left on their own accord or were asked to leave, that’s a different matter.

Bugs all over the place

This was such a massive issue in beta, it’s a wonder that it’s still a problem in live.  Certainly the Hero Engine is partly to blame for this but jeebus, get some better testing practices ASAP.  BW games are traditionally riddled with bugs but you simply can’t afford that practice in an MMO.  At least not while people are paying you to fix it.

Server Population

Who in their right mind thinks this is an issue for the general public to see?  There’s no one left on these servers, consolidate them.  Done.

Summary

State of the Game addresses are supposed to talk about what’s happened between this one and the previous one.  They then state what’s planned in the near future and some vision statements.  Answering questions is good but it doesn’t belong here, it should be its own thing.  So a cheer for actually addressing your paying audience but boo for doing 2 weeks before they all decide to stop paying.

Knight of the Old Republic Free

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See what I did there?  We’re a couple months away from SWTOR going F2P but we have more info about it now!

You get absolutely everything good about the game for free.  The story, the classes, the companions, the art.  You get what is arguably the best Star Wars game in 10 years for absolutely zero dollars.

What you do pay for is the MMO portion, the part that is pretty bad.  You pay for quick travel, you pay for purple item, you pay for bag space, you pay for crafting, you pay for PvP, you pay for dungeons, you pay for raids.  We don’t know how much, but it’s more than zero.

There’s still missing details on what exactly gets unlocked for the P2P players.  I personally cannot see why people would pay cash for a great game with crappy MMO components piece meal.  Either people will sub or they will play for free.  Hopefully we get more details down the road.

That being said, for anyone who has not had the change, KOTOR3 will be launching in a couple months.  FOR FREE.

SWTOR Going F2P

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It’s official!  Hell, I think I might play the game again once it goes live in November.

The features list is incredibly vague. Given that raids have a 1 week timeout already and there are only 3, wouldn’t the free people have an actual leg up on the paying people?  Limiting flashpoints is even weirder.  It’s like they want people to stop paying them.

So what’s left in the subscriber world?  The Secret World probably has 4-5 months before going F2P, the game seems built for it.  TERA has under a year.  RIFT’s expansion will decide it’s fate (currently has ~30 servers, over 1 year after launch).  WoW’s expansion will boost numbers to stupid levels due to pet battles but time will tell what the market says it should do.

So at the end of the day, there are only 2 MMOs that are subscriber based themeparks that I consider AAA.  WoW and RIFT.  Well near 50 games have come and gone.  Amazing.

Let's Talk About Raiding

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One of the best threads I have ever read about WoW can be found here.  It’s a very long thread, with reoccurring ideas but clearly a large divide between developer and player base.

The basic element in all of this is entitlement – or as alluded to later in the thread – prestige.  This e-peen mentality that “only I can” is so ridiculously absurd that I have great difficulty empathizing in any form.

I played WoW since launch.  I raided in every expansion and quit in every expansion.  Vanilla was impossible to organize and had huge walls (a-la EQ at the time).  TBC had gating, huge huge gating, that stopped many guilds from getting new players mid-expansion.  It was challenging, sure, but less than 1% of the entire population saw Sunwell at-level.  I’m not saying completed it, I’m saying stepped foot in it.  WotLK broke down gating and added challenge levels (heroic versions).  Raiding exploded, up to 10% of the player base completed all content at the hardest level.  We’re talking millions of more players seeing end game content than in the previous patch.   Cataclysm put in harsh raiding requirements and destroyed 25 man raids but they did bring in the LFR tool.  It went from 10% completing the content at hardest level to over 30% completing it at normal and 75% actually seeing the content in some form.

Now, I get the idea of prestige and that you want to be able to show that you did something more challenging than other people.  World firsts are for that.  I understand that the 5% debuff per month on last tier raiding annoys the uppers that have already done it as there’s no indication they didn’t have the buff outright.  I don’t understand why Blizz can’t just disable mount/title rewards for people that need the debuff to complete content at the hardest level.

I also don’t understand why this is such a big deal.  If you’re in guild ranked #130 in the world, who gives a flying heck.  Maybe the guild itself and those looking to move up.  That’s what, maybe 200 people out of 10,000,000?

It begs the question, who are you impressing exactly by beating content with the buff or without it?  If that list of people is under 100, then there’s no reason for Blizzard to look your way.  If it somehow impacts say, 5% of the playerbase, then ya, Blizzard should pay attention!

Tangentially, a SWTOR dev stated that the game failed because they listened to players.  I think this might be true in that the content from 1-50 was amazing. It was impossible to test end-game content (the stuff that’s broken) in beta as the game wipes happened every 2 weeks.  This meant that players that reached level 50 in beta were putting in 50+ hours a week to get there – not exactly who your target player base should be.  Anyhow, I think this is a great example of a company that had super success by listening to their players but did so at the wrong time and without the wrong tools.

Another Exec Leaves BioWare

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From Gamasutra.

Yet another casualty in the BW/SWTOR saga.  This time the main project lead for the entire game.  Even if he left on his own accord, this is essentially the CEO of SWOTR saying bye-bye.

For a game with so much potential and so much money thrown at it, I don’t understand how it simply is not doing what is necessary to get financial success.  I cannot believe that it took 6 months to make an LFG tool (which is amazing by the way).  I can’t believe that they still don’t have functioning ranked PvP (which every competitor has).

They hedged their bets that there would be enough people who wanted to play alts to keep the game afloat long term.  They did say 500K subs would be enough and apparently they are still above that number.  Why there are massive lay-offs and cries for Free to Play from the developer is beyond me, other than EA screaming they need the money back.

SWTOR was the last great hope for a new AAA themepark with a subscription model.  Rift seems to be still doing strong, TSW is surely going to go F2P in a few months and then Elder Scrolls will fail in amazing fashion.  The genre is done