not letting us have mounts til lvl 20 is a terrible idea hated it in swtor just makes everything take longer would rather spend my time fighting mobs than spending time running everywhere
How long does it really take to get to level 20? A few hours?
I agree. Not only is getting to lvl 20 relatively short and painless, but all of the zones from lvl 1-19 are small and easy to navigate on foot. Mounts in these small zones would only add clutter. That's just my 2 cents.
Did you guys also realize that the zones leading up to 20 were relatively small and confined? You hit 20 around the same time you go to Blackdagger Ruins, which is the largest zone up to that point and is where you really start to need a mount. It's designed that way on purpose. You don't NEED a mount before level 20.
I wish you guys were around during vanilla WoW, where the zones were freaking huge and you had to run around on foot for 40 levels. I could level 5 characters on this game to 60 in the same time I could level 1 to level 40 in vanilla WoW.
I did'nt even use my mount a whole lot once I got. There are so many mobs around it was just eaiser to kill encounter after encounter versus dealing with a train you had created with about 18 mobs. I never made it past Blackdagger Keep, but I really don't see a need for mounts at all in this type of game.
oh yeah. I didn't even come in until a little before BC and the leveling was still slow. At the time, I didn't like it because my brother was already way ahead, but now that I look back at it, I liked feel that I'd taken the time to earn my levels.
Of course, some people have lives that kept them from advancing as quickly as they'd like. Lives are for squares!
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sardokusMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
Please keep things exactly the way they are. Leveling is ridiculously fast as it is. Earn your mount and make level 20 ...wow.
Did you guys also realize that the zones leading up to 20 were relatively small and confined? You hit 20 around the same time you go to Blackdagger Ruins, which is the largest zone up to that point and is where you really start to need a mount. It's designed that way on purpose. You don't NEED a mount before level 20.
I wish you guys were around during vanilla WoW, where the zones were freaking huge and you had to run around on foot for 40 levels. I could level 5 characters on this game to 60 in the same time I could level 1 to level 40 in vanilla WoW.
heh on top of that you most likely didnt have the money to get a mount at level 40 if it was your first toon and you didnt spend alot of time auctioning stuff on the ah or found a good blue item you could sell. my first character was level 52 before i could afford my first mount. how about games like ac where you still have to hoof it to get from place to place although there are portals to take alot of the time off. new gamers nowadays just have no clue how incredibly easymode games are being made today and yet they still cry for more dumbed down game features.
0
ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
edited March 2013
The zones in SW:TOR were huge compared to Neverwinter. The Coruscant was freaking impossible to get around. The initial zones in Neverwinter are much more compact, plus you have a lot of adventuring that takes place in instances.
I swear I could write an essay on SWTOR's rise and fall. (Don't worry I won't, heaven be praised!)
I am convinced that what SWTOR got wrong was it fell victim to viral snipe at launch. It's staggered entry produced a great deal of contempt. It also produced a lot of bravado posts, where people would claim they should have been given entry, but balked when providing proof or data. In other words, they weren't really being denied, they were just, you know whining. Men who whine a lot, has become the centerpiece of gaming culture, thanks to places like 4chan. In a weird way, whining became as machismo as pwning someone in PVP. Which ironically, isn't very macho, in either case, but I digress.
But SWTOR compounded the problem: it over-promised on what would happen post-launch.
Players then did what a lot of players do. They mistook XP for "gold coins" and blazed through 1-50 in 30 to 45 days. Then twiddled their thumbs and whined that there was nothing left to do.
So note the irony here: constant whining to get in early, then massive whining when they finished early.
Now of course, players have every right to play this way. EA just never anticipated it. SWTOR had almost nothing "up its sleeve" to give the players at cap. Worse though, they kept promising they did have something. In fact, EA was prominently promising "a new planet every month" almost right up to launch.
When they did finally release a major upgrade it was, a real joke. It was just a very cheap mechanism to repeat the content, most players had already finished. The interest the launch created (and their launch was massive, it dominated gaming circles in December 2011), quickly fizzled into "this game sucks", 60 days later.
The "new planet every month" became shameful, when 6 months passed and there was still no really legitimate new content.
This to me, is the mistake all gaming companies MUST avoid. You MUST have cookies in the cupboard at launch, for when your loud, vociferous 4chan types hit cap a mere 20-30 days post-launch. This group have made a science out of viral whining. Some of them are such beta males, they aren't even involved in the game, but want to be seen as they are and so literally just cut and past the whines of others in forums and social media, so as to appear they are "elite gamers" too. That's just how dysfunctional the gaming culture is right now.
Your only combat to this is to release all kinds of fun things for capped players to do post-launch. It HAS to be there, or you will surge but then quickly die.
Now I know that NWO has no hope of reaching SWTOR's peak numbers. This is a different scale and class of MMO. So its success is measured with a small ruler. But I think some of the lessons still apply.
Heh, looks like I wrote an essay after all.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
not letting us have mounts til lvl 20 is a terrible idea hated it in swtor just makes everything take longer would rather spend my time fighting mobs than spending time running everywhere
So this game is following the exact same horrid patterns of Swtor...because it doesn't give you a mount at level 20? This has got to be the biggest stretch in logic i've seen all month.
I swear I could write an essay on SWTOR's rise and fall. (Don't worry I won't, heaven be praised!)
I am convinced that what SWTOR got wrong was it fell victim to viral snipe at launch. It's staggered entry produced a great deal of contempt. It also produced a lot of bravado posts, where people would claim they should have been given entry, but balked when providing proof or data. In other words, they weren't really being denied, they were just, you know whining. Men who whine a lot, has become the centerpiece of gaming culture, thanks to places like 4chan. In a weird way, whining became as machismo as pwning someone in PVP. Which ironically, isn't very macho, in either case, but I digress.
But SWTOR compounded the problem: it over-promised on what would happen post-launch.
Players then did what a lot of players do. They mistook XP for "gold coins" and blazed through 1-50 in 30 to 45 days. Then twiddled their thumbs and whined that there was nothing left to do.
So note the irony here: constant whining to get in early, then massive whining when they finished early.
Now of course, players have every right to play this way. EA just never anticipated it. SWTOR had almost nothing "up its sleeve" to give the players at cap. Worse though, they kept promising they did have something. In fact, EA was prominently promising "a new planet every month" almost right up to launch.
When they did finally release a major upgrade it was, a real joke. It was just a very cheap mechanism to repeat the content, most players had already finished. The interest the launch created (and their launch was massive, it dominated gaming circles in December 2011), quickly fizzled into "this game sucks", 60 days later.
The "new planet every month" became shameful, when 6 months passed and there was still no really legitimate new content.
This to me, is the mistake all gaming companies MUST avoid. You MUST have cookies in the cupboard at launch, for when your loud, vociferous 4chan types hit cap a mere 20-30 days post-launch. This group have made a science out of viral whining. Some of them are such beta males, they aren't even involved in the game, but want to be seen as they are and so literally just cut and past the whines of others in forums and social media, so as to appear they are "elite gamers" too. That's just how dysfunctional the gaming culture is right now.
Your only combat to this is to release all kinds of fun things for capped players to do post-launch. It HAS to be there, or you will surge but then quickly die.
Now I know that NWO has no hope of reaching SWTOR's peak numbers. This is a different scale and class of MMO. So its success is measured with a small ruler. But I think some of the lessons still apply.
Heh, looks like I wrote an essay after all.
Yes of course, once again it's the big bad evil whiners who ruin everything...Seriously, can you stop with that <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>? It just ruins what might have been a really good post had you not decided to include that.
Edit: Oh yeah, the broad strokes that you paint people with is terribly repugnant as well.
Yes of course, once again it's the big bad evil whiners who ruin everything...Seriously, can you stop with that <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>? It just ruins what might have been a really good post had you not decided to include that.
The emotional immaturity of gaming culture is not only well documented, it's a very serious problem...
The only way we can push past this issue, is to recognize it exists in the first place.
I am a gamer. I don't exclude myself from the indictment. We are the village we choose to live in. It's as much my problem as yours. It's OUR problem, but it is most certainly a problem, that should not be dismissed. Ironically, that episode above, produced two reactions, genuinely constructive debate on what to do about it, and then a "so what, leave us alone, this is just how it is", in other words deluge of whining about it, which as the article above rightly states, "this is people just shouting like children to get whatever attention they can".
So while the episode focused on the extreme edges of the problem, it's the culture as a whole, that needs to stand up and at least admit the problem exists.
It has to be fixed. The culture is broken right now. I think it is ABSOLUTELY something to note and make reference to, because it does effect gaming companies and their launches as well.
To tie that back to the thread at hand, NWO must recognize gaming culture is impatient and vociferous. It also expert at using social media to spread that malaise virally. Your best defense to that is to play one or two steps ahead of that culture.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
The only way we can push past this issue, is to recognize it exists in the first place.
I am a gamer. I don't exclude myself from the indictment. We are the village we choose to live in. It's as much my problem as yours. It's OUR problem, but it is most certainly a problem, that should not be dismissed. Ironically, that episode above, produced two reactions, genuinely constructive debate on what to do about it, and then a "so what, leave us alone, this is just how it is", in other words deluge of whining about it, which as the article above rightly states, "this is people just shouting like children to get whatever attention they can".
So while the episode focused on the extreme edges of the problem, it's the culture as a whole, that needs to stand up and at least admit the problem exists.
It has to be fixed. The culture is broken right now. I think it is ABSOLUTELY something to note and make reference to, because it does effect gaming companies and their launches as well.
To tie that back to the thread at hand, NWO must recognize gaming culture is impatient and vociferous. It also expert at using social media to spread that malaise virally. Your best defense to that is to play one or two steps ahead of that culture.
Criticizing a company or developer or a product they produce because you disagree with them or find fault with them in some way, and then deciding not to play their game is not being "emotionally immature."
Look, the problem with your post is the ludicrous notion that it isn't the developer, the baffling choices they made, or the concept of turning Kotor 3 into an mmo (which could have worked had they not failed in execution.) Nope, it's the whiners. It's always the whiners. It's never NOT the whiners, because whiners are apparently the root of all evil in developing a game.
0
zaphtasticMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited March 2013
I'm not sure how much this pertains to the original topic of the thread, but I think SWTOR's fall was encoded into its genes, so to say.
It was basically a single-player game with co-op and some MMO features tacked on. If they released it as "KOTOR 3" with online co-op play and episodic content DLCs ever so often instead of sticking to the tired level/gear grind DIKU clone MMO formula, it would've made freaking bank. Just my opinion, though.
I'm not sure how much this pertains to the original topic of the thread, but I think SWTOR's fall was encoded into its genes, so to say.
It was basically a single-player game with co-op and some MMO features tacked on. If they released it as "KOTOR 3" with online co-op play and episodic content DLCs ever so often instead of sticking to the tired level/gear grind DIKU clone MMO formula, it would've made freaking bank. Just my opinion, though.
Not only that, it probably would have been more conducive to their bizarre choice of engine.
Criticizing a company or developer or a product they produce because you disagree with them or find fault with them in some way, and then deciding not to play their game is not being "emotionally immature."
Look, the problem with your post is the ludicrous notion that it isn't the developer, the baffling choices they made, or the concept of turning Kotor 3 into an mmo (which could have worked had they not failed in execution.) Nope, it's the whiners. It's always the whiners. It's never NOT the whiners, because whiners are apparently the root of all evil in developing a game.
I think I may be able to clear up some foggy areas with this conversation.
From what I read of Ryger's post SWTOR's fall was SWTOR's fault for various reasons, perhaps one of the biggest being the false hype. The false hype (and of course the overall crappiness that made the hype false) was the problem because they promised much more for the game than what was provided. The whole "whining gamer" thing just seemed to be a side note (though it was a long freakin' side note) and, while I agree with it for the most part, I do not think that that encompasses the entire gaming community. If it doesn't include someone, then that someone should have nothing to worry about.
On a side note of my own, I really Do wish that people would whine less and criticize more. It can be a fine line at times, but the droning can get a little tiring.
I agree with having mounts early. Simply from a campaign stance. You are an adventurer. Even the guys in 'A Knights Tale' awesome movie by the way... had a horse. Level 10 would be ideal for a mount. I also believe that a companion should be received early on as well. level 8 or 10. or at the very least when you earn the companion for the first time, having the companion match your level. I know that spending AD is a hook here. but honestly, having spend 1 to 2k AD to quickly train my companion so I don't have to wait for 40 minutes is only going to make me walk away from the game for an hour... and in that hour I could find something more interesting to do, potentially losing PWE a customer in the long run.
Criticizing a company or developer or a product they produce because you disagree with them or find fault with them in some way, and then deciding not to play their game is not being "emotionally immature."
You completely misunderstand my point. Like 100% do not understand.
I'll explain again, but it's a tangent and I have doubts you'll ever understand. Not that because you are unintelligent, but because you seem to have a visceral reaction to this idea that the gaming community can have a deleterious effect on the gaming industry as a whole. In my mind, it is obvious that it does. I don't consider that immature, I consider that obvious.
It also helped lead to SWTOR's "downfall", not a primary factor, not even a secondary factor, but a factor none the less. I think that's obvious to anyone who saw SWTOR's launch, and saw its rise and fall within 60 days of that launch.
So my "ludicrous notion that it is not the developer", is about as far from point as is physically possible. I'd call your reaction a "straw man" argument, but that might actually insult professional straw men debaters everywhere.
I kid, I kid, apologies.
Yes of course developers are ultimately to blame for a game's rise and fall. That was, precisely my point. It's just that part of what cause developers to fail is not anticpating how the gaming community often reacts to things viscerally, angrily and with great force and impact on social media networks. If you don't handle that tide (and it is always there), if you don't anticipate it and prepare for it, you can make things worse.
You must know your customers and the community you sell to. And each community has idiosyncracies. I worked for the gaming industry for 7 years, I also worked for the music industry. They are vastly different cultures and customers. Your job as a company is to know who you are selling to and how they will react to things.
In particular, there's a significant and very loud segment of gamer that burns through MMOs like its a Donkey Kong race to the top. To them, that IS the game. You must absolutely must accommodate that crowd, and to do that, you must have some "cookies in the cupboard" to pacify them when they hit. If you do not, the reaction is not only visceral it becomes viral, so viral in fact, that people will echo the same complaints, even when they haven't purchased/tried the game. They do this, because the gaming community is viral in nature at times and the complaint is more important than the validity of the complaint. In fact, its well known gaming companies sabotage each other with these campaigns. In other words, one gaming company will help "pile on" a viral reaction to something, to create the illusion the problem is bigger than it really is.
That's just the nature of the gaming industry. You can deny that, but that's precisely my point, denying it when you are in the gaming industry is PERILOUS, because it will take you down. To avoid this, you have to stay one step ahead of it all. And in particular you must be able to separate "noise" from "valid complaint". That's a tactical skill all developers must have.
My point is SWTOR failed for many reasons, one of those reasons was it attempted to pacify social media complaints at launch, with work and focus that wasn't necessary. They failed to tone down their hype for future expectations and content and then the very people they catered to at the launch window, turned on them, when that content was not there and the expectation fell short of the reality.
That was all, entirely, the developer's fault.
It is the kind of thing Cryptic must avoid with this launch.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
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ranncoreMember, Moderators, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 2,508
edited March 2013
Heh, well at least everyone has finally come to the unanimous conclusion that SWTOR is, in fact, a failure.
I understand that there are still a few... clinging to the lifeboats.
Anyways, this game has had too much exposure to build any false hype. This last beta test wasn't exactly small. The developers aren't withholding (much) information anymore... they're landing in every little podcast you can find. Not bleeding information one carefully planned press statement or handpicked fanboi forumite question at a time.
They've got a much different approach to "building hype" than the SWTOR team. They aren't releasing screenshots from a rendering engine that the game doesn't actually use. The official forums aren't even the best source of information for this game - do you guys have any idea how active every Cryptic employees twitter account has been? Seriously, if any of your friends couldn't get a beta key - tell them to get a damned twitter account.
0
steppenkatMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Criticizing a company or developer or a product they produce because you disagree with them or find fault with them in some way, and then deciding not to play their game is not being "emotionally immature."
Look, the problem with your post is the ludicrous notion that it isn't the developer, the baffling choices they made, or the concept of turning Kotor 3 into an mmo (which could have worked had they not failed in execution.) Nope, it's the whiners. It's always the whiners. It's never NOT the whiners, because whiners are apparently the root of all evil in developing a game.
Well, you ARE whining and acting like he just attacked you personally. If you think you aren't a whiner, then why complain about that? And I agree with him completely. Communities most of the time just don't know what they want. Just read many posts around here: "The CW needs fire", or "We want this to be PnP D&D". And this post asks for this to be an even easier MMO just because OP is lazy and wants a horse at lvl 1.
Whiners have at least 60% of the blame when it comes to a community enviroment as griefing never gets sated. Whiners that get what they want will either - whine because they don't have enough or whine because they think others shouldn't get and others will whine because the developers gave in the first place.
Characters: - Titania Silverblade, the Iron Rose of Myth Drannor (Lvl 60 GWF, Destroyer) - Gwyneth, the Cowardly Cat Burglar Drowling (Lvl 60 TR, Saboteur) - Lady Rowanne Firehair, Heartwarder of Sune (Lvl 33 DC) - Satella, Sensate (LvL 44 CW, Renegade, Non-Active)
People still play SWTOR contrary to popular e-pinion, certainly the game has had huge problems in population retention but it also started out with a huge population. If anything can be said (broadly) for what made SWTOR have problems I'd think it was just a lack of clear vision for what they wanted to do. Every MMO developer wants to be the next WoW rather than actually targeting a group of players, we've seen in game after game terrible results from this approach yet no one wants to run the stable game with 100k or so subscribers anymore (despite what all recognize as the huge success that is EVE). Instead of making a game that might cater to the population already interested in your game, every developer slings a rehashed example of the same dikuMUD trinity focused grind machine and unsurprisingly after a few months players realize they've been there/done that and they move on.
I definitely worry that Neverwinter will have the same problems at end game (unending gear grind ladder of raids etc) but the Foundry means that at very least players should never be hurting for actual new content. In Neverwinter there should always be something "to do" the question is whether or not that will be enough for players or if we'll get forced into the same old trash-heap of "end game" that we've been force-fed for the last decade or so.
0
lightspeed2k10Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I got to level 23 and had 8 hours 43 minutes played. That is too long for you to wait to get a mount?
Really depends on how you play. I investigated everything looking for easter eggs and such. After 8 hours I was still 10th and really could have used a mount. Sure I investigate on foot but then the run back really kind of sucks.
Comments
I agree. Not only is getting to lvl 20 relatively short and painless, but all of the zones from lvl 1-19 are small and easy to navigate on foot. Mounts in these small zones would only add clutter. That's just my 2 cents.
I wish you guys were around during vanilla WoW, where the zones were freaking huge and you had to run around on foot for 40 levels. I could level 5 characters on this game to 60 in the same time I could level 1 to level 40 in vanilla WoW.
Of course, some people have lives that kept them from advancing as quickly as they'd like. Lives are for squares!
I will said don't make the same mistake that happen on Simcity on launch day. :P
heh on top of that you most likely didnt have the money to get a mount at level 40 if it was your first toon and you didnt spend alot of time auctioning stuff on the ah or found a good blue item you could sell. my first character was level 52 before i could afford my first mount. how about games like ac where you still have to hoof it to get from place to place although there are portals to take alot of the time off. new gamers nowadays just have no clue how incredibly easymode games are being made today and yet they still cry for more dumbed down game features.
Then run, its much faster.
I am convinced that what SWTOR got wrong was it fell victim to viral snipe at launch. It's staggered entry produced a great deal of contempt. It also produced a lot of bravado posts, where people would claim they should have been given entry, but balked when providing proof or data. In other words, they weren't really being denied, they were just, you know whining. Men who whine a lot, has become the centerpiece of gaming culture, thanks to places like 4chan. In a weird way, whining became as machismo as pwning someone in PVP. Which ironically, isn't very macho, in either case, but I digress.
But SWTOR compounded the problem: it over-promised on what would happen post-launch.
Players then did what a lot of players do. They mistook XP for "gold coins" and blazed through 1-50 in 30 to 45 days. Then twiddled their thumbs and whined that there was nothing left to do.
So note the irony here: constant whining to get in early, then massive whining when they finished early.
Now of course, players have every right to play this way. EA just never anticipated it. SWTOR had almost nothing "up its sleeve" to give the players at cap. Worse though, they kept promising they did have something. In fact, EA was prominently promising "a new planet every month" almost right up to launch.
When they did finally release a major upgrade it was, a real joke. It was just a very cheap mechanism to repeat the content, most players had already finished. The interest the launch created (and their launch was massive, it dominated gaming circles in December 2011), quickly fizzled into "this game sucks", 60 days later.
The "new planet every month" became shameful, when 6 months passed and there was still no really legitimate new content.
This to me, is the mistake all gaming companies MUST avoid. You MUST have cookies in the cupboard at launch, for when your loud, vociferous 4chan types hit cap a mere 20-30 days post-launch. This group have made a science out of viral whining. Some of them are such beta males, they aren't even involved in the game, but want to be seen as they are and so literally just cut and past the whines of others in forums and social media, so as to appear they are "elite gamers" too. That's just how dysfunctional the gaming culture is right now.
Your only combat to this is to release all kinds of fun things for capped players to do post-launch. It HAS to be there, or you will surge but then quickly die.
Now I know that NWO has no hope of reaching SWTOR's peak numbers. This is a different scale and class of MMO. So its success is measured with a small ruler. But I think some of the lessons still apply.
Heh, looks like I wrote an essay after all.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
So this game is following the exact same horrid patterns of Swtor...because it doesn't give you a mount at level 20? This has got to be the biggest stretch in logic i've seen all month.
Yes of course, once again it's the big bad evil whiners who ruin everything...Seriously, can you stop with that <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>? It just ruins what might have been a really good post had you not decided to include that.
Edit: Oh yeah, the broad strokes that you paint people with is terribly repugnant as well.
The emotional immaturity of gaming culture is not only well documented, it's a very serious problem...
P-A Gaming Culture Video
The only way we can push past this issue, is to recognize it exists in the first place.
I am a gamer. I don't exclude myself from the indictment. We are the village we choose to live in. It's as much my problem as yours. It's OUR problem, but it is most certainly a problem, that should not be dismissed. Ironically, that episode above, produced two reactions, genuinely constructive debate on what to do about it, and then a "so what, leave us alone, this is just how it is", in other words deluge of whining about it, which as the article above rightly states, "this is people just shouting like children to get whatever attention they can".
So while the episode focused on the extreme edges of the problem, it's the culture as a whole, that needs to stand up and at least admit the problem exists.
It has to be fixed. The culture is broken right now. I think it is ABSOLUTELY something to note and make reference to, because it does effect gaming companies and their launches as well.
To tie that back to the thread at hand, NWO must recognize gaming culture is impatient and vociferous. It also expert at using social media to spread that malaise virally. Your best defense to that is to play one or two steps ahead of that culture.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
Criticizing a company or developer or a product they produce because you disagree with them or find fault with them in some way, and then deciding not to play their game is not being "emotionally immature."
Look, the problem with your post is the ludicrous notion that it isn't the developer, the baffling choices they made, or the concept of turning Kotor 3 into an mmo (which could have worked had they not failed in execution.) Nope, it's the whiners. It's always the whiners. It's never NOT the whiners, because whiners are apparently the root of all evil in developing a game.
It was basically a single-player game with co-op and some MMO features tacked on. If they released it as "KOTOR 3" with online co-op play and episodic content DLCs ever so often instead of sticking to the tired level/gear grind DIKU clone MMO formula, it would've made freaking bank. Just my opinion, though.
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
Not only that, it probably would have been more conducive to their bizarre choice of engine.
I think I may be able to clear up some foggy areas with this conversation.
From what I read of Ryger's post SWTOR's fall was SWTOR's fault for various reasons, perhaps one of the biggest being the false hype. The false hype (and of course the overall crappiness that made the hype false) was the problem because they promised much more for the game than what was provided. The whole "whining gamer" thing just seemed to be a side note (though it was a long freakin' side note) and, while I agree with it for the most part, I do not think that that encompasses the entire gaming community. If it doesn't include someone, then that someone should have nothing to worry about.
On a side note of my own, I really Do wish that people would whine less and criticize more. It can be a fine line at times, but the droning can get a little tiring.
-={Old Timers Guild}=-
You completely misunderstand my point. Like 100% do not understand.
I'll explain again, but it's a tangent and I have doubts you'll ever understand. Not that because you are unintelligent, but because you seem to have a visceral reaction to this idea that the gaming community can have a deleterious effect on the gaming industry as a whole. In my mind, it is obvious that it does. I don't consider that immature, I consider that obvious.
It also helped lead to SWTOR's "downfall", not a primary factor, not even a secondary factor, but a factor none the less. I think that's obvious to anyone who saw SWTOR's launch, and saw its rise and fall within 60 days of that launch.
So my "ludicrous notion that it is not the developer", is about as far from point as is physically possible. I'd call your reaction a "straw man" argument, but that might actually insult professional straw men debaters everywhere.
I kid, I kid, apologies.
Yes of course developers are ultimately to blame for a game's rise and fall. That was, precisely my point. It's just that part of what cause developers to fail is not anticpating how the gaming community often reacts to things viscerally, angrily and with great force and impact on social media networks. If you don't handle that tide (and it is always there), if you don't anticipate it and prepare for it, you can make things worse.
You must know your customers and the community you sell to. And each community has idiosyncracies. I worked for the gaming industry for 7 years, I also worked for the music industry. They are vastly different cultures and customers. Your job as a company is to know who you are selling to and how they will react to things.
In particular, there's a significant and very loud segment of gamer that burns through MMOs like its a Donkey Kong race to the top. To them, that IS the game. You must absolutely must accommodate that crowd, and to do that, you must have some "cookies in the cupboard" to pacify them when they hit. If you do not, the reaction is not only visceral it becomes viral, so viral in fact, that people will echo the same complaints, even when they haven't purchased/tried the game. They do this, because the gaming community is viral in nature at times and the complaint is more important than the validity of the complaint. In fact, its well known gaming companies sabotage each other with these campaigns. In other words, one gaming company will help "pile on" a viral reaction to something, to create the illusion the problem is bigger than it really is.
That's just the nature of the gaming industry. You can deny that, but that's precisely my point, denying it when you are in the gaming industry is PERILOUS, because it will take you down. To avoid this, you have to stay one step ahead of it all. And in particular you must be able to separate "noise" from "valid complaint". That's a tactical skill all developers must have.
My point is SWTOR failed for many reasons, one of those reasons was it attempted to pacify social media complaints at launch, with work and focus that wasn't necessary. They failed to tone down their hype for future expectations and content and then the very people they catered to at the launch window, turned on them, when that content was not there and the expectation fell short of the reality.
That was all, entirely, the developer's fault.
It is the kind of thing Cryptic must avoid with this launch.
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I understand that there are still a few... clinging to the lifeboats.
Anyways, this game has had too much exposure to build any false hype. This last beta test wasn't exactly small. The developers aren't withholding (much) information anymore... they're landing in every little podcast you can find. Not bleeding information one carefully planned press statement or handpicked fanboi forumite question at a time.
They've got a much different approach to "building hype" than the SWTOR team. They aren't releasing screenshots from a rendering engine that the game doesn't actually use. The official forums aren't even the best source of information for this game - do you guys have any idea how active every Cryptic employees twitter account has been? Seriously, if any of your friends couldn't get a beta key - tell them to get a damned twitter account.
Well, you ARE whining and acting like he just attacked you personally. If you think you aren't a whiner, then why complain about that? And I agree with him completely. Communities most of the time just don't know what they want. Just read many posts around here: "The CW needs fire", or "We want this to be PnP D&D". And this post asks for this to be an even easier MMO just because OP is lazy and wants a horse at lvl 1.
Whiners have at least 60% of the blame when it comes to a community enviroment as griefing never gets sated. Whiners that get what they want will either - whine because they don't have enough or whine because they think others shouldn't get and others will whine because the developers gave in the first place.
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I definitely worry that Neverwinter will have the same problems at end game (unending gear grind ladder of raids etc) but the Foundry means that at very least players should never be hurting for actual new content. In Neverwinter there should always be something "to do" the question is whether or not that will be enough for players or if we'll get forced into the same old trash-heap of "end game" that we've been force-fed for the last decade or so.
Really depends on how you play. I investigated everything looking for easter eggs and such. After 8 hours I was still 10th and really could have used a mount. Sure I investigate on foot but then the run back really kind of sucks.