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Thought about SWTOR vs ARRFollow

#1 Apr 15 2013 at 2:14 PM Rating: Default
Star Wars: The Old Republic and A Realm Reborn both have/had the same goals.

Take the World of Warcraft formula and apply the symbols and feel of a beloved franchise.

Star Wars: The Old Republic failed. How will A Realm Reborn be able to do any differently?

Both are theme park, "playing it safe", formulaic MMORPGs. SWTOR took the formula and added jedi, lightsabers, sith, etc. while ARR took the formula and added chocobos, jobs, moogles, etc.

Now, how will ARR succeed where SWTOR failed, when the Star Wars fandom is much larger than the Final Fantasy fandom?


#2 Apr 15 2013 at 2:20 PM Rating: Good
Here we go again. You sure like doom-and-gloom posts.

SWTOR to my understanding failed because of its severe lack of endgame content. From what I understand, the story was great.

Also, I believe they made a grave choice in making everything in that game voice acted. That significantly increases the amount of time it took to release new content which is what is needed especially in the life of a new MMORPG.

I can't talk about what ARR offers due to NDA, so it's up to S-E to figure out why not only they failed the first time around but figure out what made the game they are modeling ARR off of so successful and everlasting. For FFXI that game was Everquest, for FFXIV that game will be WoW. Other developers I feel are copying the game too closely which makes people feel like they should just play the game they copied off of in the first place.

My LS mate makes a joke on RaidCall whenever I mention SWTOR, he gets in a deep voice and yells. "It's just WoW. In Spaaaaaaaaace!"

Edited, Apr 15th 2013 1:23pm by UltKnightGrover
#3 Apr 15 2013 at 2:24 PM Rating: Good
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SWTOR's problem was not only a lack of endgame content, but that in fact once you reached endgame you were playing an entirely different game.

You're making so many false comparisons up there, it's difficult to actually sort them all out.

Also SWTOR's story was fantastic. Most enjoyable leveling experience I've had in an MMO to date.
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#4 Apr 15 2013 at 2:25 PM Rating: Default
Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the main reason for SWTOR failing was the formulaic WoW systems being the bulk of the game... which appears to be exactly what Yoshi-P is going for.

We've been over it - FFXIV doesn't do anything new. It's all this formula, this "global standard" with Final Fantasy icons applied. It's exactly what SWTOR did with much more popular icons.

Edited, Apr 15th 2013 4:26pm by Killua125
#5 Apr 15 2013 at 2:27 PM Rating: Decent
Killua125 wrote:


We've been over it - FFXIV doesn't do anything new. It's all this formula, this "global standard" with Final Fantasy icons applied. It's exactly what SWTOR did with much more popular icons.



If you're so sure of what ARR is, what's the point of the discussion then?
#6REDACTED, Posted: Apr 15 2013 at 2:31 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I'm wondering how Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn can succeed when it's exactly the same formula.
#7 Apr 15 2013 at 2:33 PM Rating: Excellent
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"Everyone [you've] spoken to agrees..."

Well THERE'S an authoritative source if I've ever seen one.

People bash WoW's style because it's cool to pick on the mainstream example. But here's something to consider: it set the standard.

Prior to WoW for instance, if you wanted to pick up a quest from an NPC, you had to either talk to everyone in the world, or know ahead of time which NPCs offered quests you could take. Blizzard decided that was needlessly arcane and added icons for NPCs that had quests you could either take, take soon, take repeatedly, or turn in. This was revolutionary at the time not because Blizzard decreed it so, but because it vastly improved the quality of life for people looking to pick up quests from NPCs. And new games that come along, adapt this system for themselves NOT because they're copying WoW, but because it's a good idea and makes the player's experience more enjoyable overall.

That's just one example; there are dozens more.

You can't just say "SWTOR copied WoW and added lightsabers" and leave it at that. It isn't that simple, it's never that simple.
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#8 Apr 15 2013 at 2:34 PM Rating: Good
We told you why Star Wars failed. You refuse to believe it. Not sure what more you want.


Edited, Apr 15th 2013 1:37pm by UltKnightGrover
#9REDACTED, Posted: Apr 15 2013 at 2:39 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) So you think World of Warcraft with Final Fantasy icons is a great idea for an awesome MMORPG?
#10 Apr 15 2013 at 2:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Poubelle wrote:
I'm personally sick of all the 'global standard' stuff.
Holy crap we know.
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#11 Apr 15 2013 at 2:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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Killua125 wrote:
Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the main reason for SWTOR failing was the formulaic WoW systems being the bulk of the game... which appears to be exactly what Yoshi-P is going for.

We've been over it - FFXIV doesn't do anything new. It's all this formula, this "global standard" with Final Fantasy icons applied. It's exactly what SWTOR did with much more popular icons.

Edited, Apr 15th 2013 4:26pm by Killua125


Gosh what are you talking about? The interface isn't why SWTOR failed. The reason SWTOR failed is because there was no compelling reason to keep playing. Once you played it through and heard everything Jennifer Hale (yea and I guess those other actors too) had to say, that was it. PvP wasn't terrific, and there wasn't anything at all endgame-wise that even passed as mmo. That's why it failed. You would be hard pressed to find a review that says it failed because it was "too wow".

I mean, get over it dude.
#12REDACTED, Posted: Apr 15 2013 at 2:54 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Get over what exactly? "Innovation" is the last think the current ARR team is thinking about. It isn't even on their radar. It's all about using World of Warcraft and applying Final Fantasy to it. Yoshi-P has gone on record with that.
#13 Apr 15 2013 at 3:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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Killua125 wrote:
Get over what exactly? "Innovation" is the last think the current ARR team is thinking about. It isn't even on their radar. It's all about using World of Warcraft and applying Final Fantasy to it. Yoshi-P has gone on record with that.

Nobody wants "World of Warcraft but with lightsabers" or "World of Warcraft but with chocobos".

Yoshi-P seems to think that people hated FFXIV 1.0 because it was "too unique". No, people hated it because that innovation was poorly implemented and the game wasn't even close to being ready for release.


And yet, people seemed to want "World of Warcraft but with Random Events popping out of the sky". Seriously, Rift is about as WoW clone as they come - it's literally the same exact game in every way - and that succeeded just fine. Did it topple WoW? No, but at this point WoW is so entrenched in peoples' minds the only game that will kill it will be itself - but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for other kids on the block who use formulas that people enjoy and that make sense.

Yoshi-P knows why people hated 1.0. It wasn't too unique, it was ******* stupid. It was stupid to have "surplus xp" as if it was really a surplus and not the "diminishing xp" that it really was. It was stupid to have to do quests at an Aetheryte and only have so many you could do a day as your main way of leveling. The armory system was dumb. The jobs weren't even Final Fantasy jobs they were mish mash generic mockups that were shadows of what FF is. The interface was lagtacular and didn't make ANY sense at all. Collision was even worse than it was in FFXI and I didn't think that was possible. The game brought even the most powerful systems to a crawl, and it wasn't even worth it considering the main way they made the game seem large was by copy-pasta areas to artificially expand the terrain.

That's what Yoshi-P set out to change, and I have complete faith that he's done it.
#14REDACTED, Posted: Apr 15 2013 at 3:09 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) I'm not arguing in favor of 1.0. I just don't know if World of Warcraft, but with Final Fantasy fanservice was a great direction to go in.
#15 Apr 15 2013 at 3:51 PM Rating: Good
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UltKnightGrover wrote:
SWTOR to my understanding failed because of its severe lack of endgame content. From what I understand, the story was great.


SWTOR failed because of many things.

A) Endgame. Not only was it barely there in the beginning but it was horrendous. The ranges in difficulty essentially came down to the equivalent of seeing a marshmallow, picking up a marshmallow, or eating a marshmallow. That's assuming, of course, if you could actually complete most fights without running into crippling bugs (Soa being the most notorious as he'd randomly (80%) go immune at the wrong times, the whole floor platforming gimmick broke, or he'd never go out of his "enrage" even when the encounter reset. Plus, there's also the fact that

B) Gear and crafting. All endgame gear was rendered completely useless for the first few patches because of the whole gear customization system they created. I played throughout two full patches and it was ridiculous because endgame gear was for looks and not performance mostly because of the mods: if you did dailies for the mods you could get through there you actually had higher stats than the gear dropped in endgame because your "Tier" gear only had two slots versus the three-four you could get via crafting.

C) Crafting. Crafting was just... ridiculous. The sheer amount of RNG forced to try to discover patterns for mods/barrels/etc. was ridiculous in and of itself never mind the fact that most of them were useless to begin with and the useful selections were mysteriously missing. Actual armor crafting was even more ridiculous with a selection having 3 main branches and each of THOSE branches having 7 offshoots. So, to get the one piece of armor actually useful to you you'd have to spend ridiculous amounts of mats simply just to attempt to "discover" that one recipe and then you'd have to spent even more trying to get it HQed as normals were useless.

Plus, the actual armor and weapons you could make were useless. People could get quested items or use customizable gear from a vendor that would allow them to upgrade as the game went. Only jewelry was useful to make.

D) Ilum. The daily and PvP island was so horribly coded and designed half of it was just turned off. I don't think they ever fixed this.

E) Space Missions. Decently fun the first few times but as they're a system of grinding money it become boring fast. Plus, they were easily bottable, undetectable, and the economy was ruined from the get-go.

F) Zoning, load times. *Everything*, even with an SSD, took bloody forever to load. The planets themselves were fairly massive in terms of size but mostly empty space.

G) Game performance. Horrendous. SWTOR had the most horrendous engine I've ever seen and was so badly put together and such a resource hog it required two processes to handle the bloat. Just sitting alone could easily cause the game to use almost 3.5 gigs of RAM. Crashes and stuttering aside, the actual combat system was excessively bad -- FFXIV 1.0's was wonderful in comparison to give you an idea. Half of the time abilities wouldn't fire off due to animation locking, or the animation would stall and consume the ability. Tanks were actually the worst off due to the fact that the parry animation would consume ablities left and right which made tanking an exercise in frustration.

H) Time Period. This requires explanation and is the biggest issue. Essentially, whoever designed the game looked at how WoW was around late Vanilla/early TBC and declared that was essentially how they wanted the game to be without taking into account improvements to the gaming experience made since then. Too much was put on the voice acting in terms of emphasis and very little else in the game left any impression. All of the environments, art assets, and most of the game code was actually done overseas in China.

I think Huttball was about the only damned thing they did that most people enjoyed.
#16 Apr 15 2013 at 3:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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Ok.. so let's try this then..

What would your vision of a Final Fantasy-themed MMO be? What style of combat? How would you like to handle questing? Story?

Remember that your golden rule here was "not WoW." So, ok, do those things well without making it at all like World of Warcraft.
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#17 Apr 15 2013 at 4:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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Killua125 wrote:
Everyone I've spoken to agrees that the main reason for SWTOR failing was the formulaic WoW systems being the bulk of the game... which appears to be exactly what Yoshi-P is going for.

We've been over it - FFXIV doesn't do anything new. It's all this formula, this "global standard" with Final Fantasy icons applied. It's exactly what SWTOR did with much more popular icons.

Edited, Apr 15th 2013 4:26pm by Killua125


Seriously with who did you talk? The main reason the game failed was due to endgame content thats it.

I had some friends that were gonna play it. After a while from the release that i came in contact with them and asked them if they played the answer was that most of them stopped. When i asked why they told me the game its great for you to try it out...the leveling is the best part and its the best by far than any other MMO but the endgame is nowhere to be found. That same opinion came from dozen other places in the internet i looked.

The MAIN and biggest issue was the end-game. If SWTOR didn't fail in that aspect "a very important aspect" the game would still be going strong.

If Yoshi releases a lot of end game content and update it frequently then my personal opinion is that it will win where SWTOR failed.
#18 Apr 15 2013 at 5:16 PM Rating: Decent
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Killua125 wrote:
Star Wars: The Old Republic and A Realm Reborn both have/had the same goals.

Take the World of Warcraft formula and apply the symbols and feel of a beloved franchise.

Star Wars: The Old Republic failed. How will A Realm Reborn be able to do any differently?

Both are theme park, "playing it safe", formulaic MMORPGs. SWTOR took the formula and added jedi, lightsabers, sith, etc. while ARR took the formula and added chocobos, jobs, moogles, etc.

Now, how will ARR succeed where SWTOR failed, when the Star Wars fandom is much larger than the Final Fantasy fandom?




I didn't realize you've played the full released version of ARR already! That's awesome man!
#19 Apr 15 2013 at 5:57 PM Rating: Good
Killua125 wrote:
I'm not arguing in favor of 1.0. I just don't know if World of Warcraft, but with Final Fantasy fanservice was a great direction to go in.

I would just feel foolish to play a World of Warcraft with 1% of the content just because the chocobos give me a sense of nostalgia. I want something new, not the same old thing.

Edited, Apr 15th 2013 5:10pm by Killua125


SE tried to be "not like WoW" and failed hard. Now they're trying to stay true to FF, but throw in a lot of features that are known fan-favorites. You can dislike it all you want, but until you're at the helm of a project with tens of millions of dollars at stake, your opinion on the direction of the project counts for a whole lot of nothing.
#20 Apr 16 2013 at 12:20 AM Rating: Good
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Seriously, when is enough enough? I genuinely want to know.

Killua, if you put as much thought into real ideas that you wanted implemented to improve the game, as you did crying about how the sky is falling and coming up with new ways to complain about a game that no one is even playing right now (even Beta testers are limited to their experiences), I might click on one of your threads with just a little bit of optimism that it won't be a complete waste of my time. Unfortuntely, time and time again, you prove that you only have one thing to say, you just want to keep saying it in different ways, on brand new posts!

Edited, Apr 16th 2013 1:21am by Ryklin
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#21 Apr 16 2013 at 3:58 AM Rating: Decent
SWTOR failed for the exact same reason FFXIV ARR will fail, they spent too much money on a game that will never attract millions of players.

SWTOR would of been quite successful if it would of had a normal budget of around 50m, it just can't make the money back because it spent way too much on development. FFXIV ARR spent about the same if not more, so yeah it's not going to go well.
#22 Apr 16 2013 at 5:08 AM Rating: Good
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preludes wrote:
SWTOR failed for the exact same reason FFXIV ARR will fail, they spent too much money on a game that will never attract millions of players.

SWTOR would of been quite successful if it would of had a normal budget of around 50m, it just can't make the money back because it spent way too much on development. FFXIV ARR spent about the same if not more, so yeah it's not going to go well.


I fail to see why it should fail. If the game is made properly without problems like the one SWTOR had (no end game) the game could very well be successful. Just yesterday i showed the game to a friend of mine that is looking for a new game to play and he got hooked up with it after a few videos.

What makes my friend and me (since i didn't play 1.0 or XI) that decided to play the game any different than the other "millions" of gamers?

There are a few basic points an MMO should have to keep their fan base. SWTOR didn't fail because they had invested a lot of money. It failed because they did the wrong decisions and moves. They have to blame themselves only, and not because they invested a lot of money but because they didn't put them in good use.


Personally speaking the things i will look in a new MMO are :

a) Goodish Graphics (check)

b) Good/easy to use UI (semi check since i can't be sure if i don't test it myself) -Even though a semi good UI can be passable (i am playing Eve online after all)

c) Multiple ways to level with that being heavy questing and dungeons mainly (check)

d) Crafting system (semi check since again we do not have enough information to be 100% sure)

e) Good end-game content (not sure as of yet since haven't found any info about them yet)

There are other points as well like server stability, lag etc but those usually are resolved within the first days of the game launch.

So i don't know about you but those are the things i look in every MMO. After i took a look at FF i found myself somewhat satisfied enough to at least give it a try. As you can see i believe that most of my points are being satisfied to at least some degree with the current info we have. If the game turns out that it isn't what i am looking for then i will not play it of course.
#23 Apr 16 2013 at 5:40 AM Rating: Excellent
I think that's a decent list, but the server stability and connection issues is a bit more important than you've emphasized. A bad launch isn't a death sentence for an MMO or for any game, but it can cripple it heavily and tarnishes the reputation of the publisher. Look how much **** EA has taken over the botched launch of SimCity. Even though those who were able to play it said it's a fun game, the fact that the majority of people who bought it could not even play it that first week really soured the game on a lot of people.

Part of the reason 1.0 originally failed was, in fact, because of the server issues which were never quite resolved. I managed to cling inside the game until the end last November, but many other people were kicked out. 1.0 ended like it began - beautiful graphics, game engine and servers whimpering in pain.
#24 Apr 16 2013 at 5:42 AM Rating: Decent
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My friend got to play the (NDA) this past weekend and he told me that he really liked it. This is a guy that absolutely hated FFXI, granted I got him to play it in 2010 and he was pretty much solo the whole time. He said that the deciding factor for whether or not he would play the game would be the end-game content and I think he's right. MMO's today are all about the end-game now, and much less about the journey to that point. If Yoshi has been copying WoW's playbook he must know this already, especially with such a large portion of Legacy players ready to go and tackle that content. However, no amount of content will be enough, and he will most certainly have to mimic WoW's content releasing model. This is where the strengths of a subscription model will hopefully shine. Having seen how much content they created and put out toward the end of 1.0 I have no doubt that they will continue to constantly add new stuff to ARR. Lets just hope they don't catch the nasty power creep WoW has... That stuff is like herpes.
#25 Apr 16 2013 at 5:47 AM Rating: Decent
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Me and all my friends quit SWTOR because it felt like playing WoW and we've already quit that once and didn't think it was fun to go back even though it was in space this time. Now it had a lot more focus on story which is something I wish more MMOs would focus on (even more so than SWTOR actually) but it also had a lot of problems that WoW didn't have and ARR might not have.

I know a lot of people liked SWTOR until endgame where they quit so I think there are a lot of different reasons it "failed". Now sure I am a little worried about Yoshis decision to heavily focus on making WoW/GW2 with a FF theme, but that is because I want the genre to move forward and since I love FF I would particularly love FF to do it. It is not because I am worried its current direction will make it crash and burn.

There are a lot of people who would love a FF themed WoW/GW2 with a twist and so I doubt the game will fail because of its direction tbh. If ARR fails I think it will be because they've had to put so much resources into it and with that needs a large playerbase, which after the horrible reputation 1.0 has given XIV it might be hard to aquire... I mean it is generally difficult even when you start with a clean slate and good reputation from previous titles.

I personally think ARR can do decently compared to SWTOR just because it has more focus on other things than pure leveling. There will hopefully be a proper endgame from day one which coupled with minigames, housing and how it synergises with crafting and other things outside of the regular level/endgame might actually be enough. Not to mention that the SWTOR world was just horrible, I have never played a MMORPG that felt as restrictive and linier, for the lack of a better word. as SWTOR did in terms of zones.

Like I said, I am sceptical about a lot of things with ARR, but honestly just because I feel one way doesn't mean MOST people do and that they game will fail.
#26 Apr 16 2013 at 6:17 AM Rating: Decent
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preludes wrote:
SWTOR failed for the exact same reason FFXIV ARR will fail, they spent too much money on a game that will never attract millions of players.

SWTOR would of been quite successful if it would of had a normal budget of around 50m, it just can't make the money back because it spent way too much on development. FFXIV ARR spent about the same if not more, so yeah it's not going to go well.


Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, because after you've gathered all the facts, you can see the big picture. This is what you come up with? I really wish you would have posted something more intelligent. Strange as it may be, I do love hearing a really good differing opinion. I know you post those things with the intent of getting some White Knight to run to the game's defense. It detracts from it. That aside, I have some thoughts.

Hindsight being a wonderful thing, I've learned from FFXI, that an MMO doesn't need millions of subscribers to be profitable. What do you think they spent the money on exactly? You seem to have a wonderful imagination, you should make some more assumptions. I don't care for Star Wars, but I did hear they had quality voice acting/story. Maybe some of the money went there. I've also heard that they lacked things to do at the end game stage. That leaves me wondering what else could have taken up all those development resources. You seem to know though.

There has never been a company that took a failed MMO and rebuilt it from the ground up. Even you can see that as a huge financial risk. We all love to talk ourselves up and profess/imply that we know what's best, or what would, and wouldn't work. Running with that train of thought, would you take that risk? If yes, how would you feel about failing? Have you ever failed at something? If yes, when you try again, do you try twice as hard? Three times? How hard? The most beautiful thing about ARR, is its "people" inspired development. There is no "stick up the ***" person doing whatever he wants. I'm more worried about Final Fantasy XV, than I am ARR. At least Yoshi knows what not to do, and shows interest in what the majority wants.

If ARR fails, it wont be for the reason you stated. It seems like everyone is aware how badly ARR's failure is going affect SE, but never factor how that impacts the way they handle it. For some reason, people like you think that the company's just going to sit on their ***, and just go down without a fight. You over simplify everything. I can see it now, "ARR fails because fans found out that it spent too much money in development." Genius right?

If this were a new dev team trying to making it, I'd be less optimistic. Luckily, some people can afford mistakes, while other's can't. It's also fortunate enough to carry the "Final Fantasy" name, mostly likely the only reason they might pull this off. The only thing ARR needs to be successful, is to be a fun game that people actually want to play. No one is going to ignore it just because it had a bad launch, while every review site is saying how great it is. Obviously, if the reviews are bad, they wont come back. That pretty much makes their path forward very clear. If they put more than 50 million or more into the right areas of development, that just might be what they need to attract people. Seeing as we have no idea what they're developing in great detail, I'm going to assume your negativity is a personal issue, not a logical one.

Try and recall how the name "Final Fantasy" came to be. If failure means the end of the company (Which I hope it does Smiley: smile), that might give them good incentive to stop all the bad ideas they've been spending money on for the past decade. Perhaps snap them out of this complacency "we" enabled. I do hope they pull out all the stops, so they don't fail again. That's what I would do. They even asked fans for input, which never would have happened without the failure. (I hope interacting with fans continues) If it fails again, maybe it's time to move on.

P.S.

I miss early 1.0 days when the negativity had real merit. It was an anti SE field day! White Knights were slaughtered daily!
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