Games BioWare employee speaks out - SWTORs biggest cost - The Engine

[Mkilbride]

For a long time, people have said the VA was what made SWTOR so expensive. Now an employee speaks out and says it was the Engine.
http://raidwarning.com/bioware-creative-director-details-swtor-development-issues/

He also talks about how they believe the content they made would last the average player 3 months, and they found out it was more like two weeks.

 

[BloodOmen]

If the engine was the most expensive part someone clearly ran off with the money then because the engine was/is terrible.

 

[Mkilbride]

That's what one of the devs said. He said the Engine was a complete mess and they were designing content alongside designing the engine - which meant alot of headaches...

I think this is one of the reasons Mark Jacobs said with CSE he is going to focus on "Making the Engine, and making sure everything works" before actually making the content for the Engine.

 

[BloodOmen]

That's what one of the devs said. He said the Engine was a complete mess and they were designing content alongside designing the engine - which meant alot of headaches...

I think this is one of the reasons Mark Jacobs said with CSE he is going to focus on "Making the Engine, and making sure everything works" before actually making the content for the Engine.

Sound and logical way of doing it, I have a feeling Bioware would have been heavily pressured into rushing it from EA. Had they taken more time to release it the game may not have had to rely on F2P to bring in reasonable revenue.

 

[Mkilbride]

Of course they were rushed!

The game was announced and then released like a year later - in MMO time frames, that's insane. Granted, they've had the largest budget & team of any MMO to date...but some things can't be rushed by just throwing more money at it!

 

[Ctuchik]

But there wasn't anything massively wrong with the game when it launched, it just didn't have enough content to satisfy the nolifers. But then again, you're never gonna satisfy that sad bunch of fuckwits are you?

No matter how much content a MMO company kicks out your always gonna have people bitching that it's not enough...

Sure the game did have problems when it launched, but what MMO doesn't?

But yes they were rushed and suffered because of it, i don't think anyone can dispute that with a straight face.

 

[Madmaxx]

It wasn't the "no-lifers" that suffered at release it was everyone I think , because pve was great and getting to 50 was fun. But once you got to 50 for example it was the pvp bags that never gave you an item or anything of a bonus, playing a game for a week and getting nothing but a rank which gave you access to items you couldn't get was a bitch.

Oh and the fact that the pvp was a massive lag fest + totally worthless without out the dailies, made the area completely barren unless a daily BG or whatever was up.

I still think getting and playing the game to 50 was worth because of the story and choices you got to make though.

 

[Raven]

It had nothing to do with nolifers, there simply wasn't enough content to keep you interested after level 50, not unless you enjoy 24/7 huttball. I played it pretty casually, got to level 50 in a few weeks then realised there was absolutely nothing to do.

 

[Cirventhor]

I remember interviews with BioWare from right before launch where they were asked the obvious endgame questions. I recall them putting a heavy emphasis on the 8 class stories (making alts basically) more than on regular endgame content. I got worried about the longevity of the game hearing that, even before launch. A lot of gamers play MMOs for the endgame content, not creating several alts, at least not shortly after release. Think a lot of MMOs these days use too much ressources on developing leveling content compared to endgame content or player-driven content (crafting, housing, proper World PvP system etc).

 

[Ctuchik]

I played it pretty casually, got to level 50 in a few weeks

How is THAT playing it casually?

 

[Raven]

...er, did you play it? Levelling was stupidly fast.

It's the only thing I disliked about the levelling, it was too quick. I often found I had out levelled a planet long before finishing the missions.

 

[BloodOmen]

*cough* got to 50 in like 2 days or something, got bored pretty quickly from playing huttball for 5000000000000 hours tho.

 

[Madmaxx]

yeah I remember if you did the majority of quests on 1 world you got access to a bonus series which gave rare items for choice reward, as well as fat amounts of exp.

 

[Dukat]

huttball

This.

 

[rynnor]

But there wasn't anything massively wrong with the game when it launched, it just didn't have enough content to satisfy the nolifers. But then again, you're never gonna satisfy that sad bunch of fuckwits are you?

Not entirely true - the game in general was fine (except for a slow memory leak) but it wasn't capable of handling open pvp - they had a few goes at it but it had to be abandoned in the end because the engine just couldn't support that.

It was a pretty engine rather than a resilient one.

 

[Ctuchik]

...er, did you play it?

I do, got my first 50 about 6 months ago.

 

[Raven]

So you're an hour a week kinda a guy...that's fine...but are you sure MMOs are your thing?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Never4 trust what an employee, even a high ranking one, says about a company/game as they usually don't haev the whole picture and instead only base things on their own problems at work.

Graphics artist goes "The engine was sh*t and real pain to work with since it wasn't finished", while the truth is that it had to be developed along side other things or people would've been fired for lack of work, or the timetables didn't work, or the publisher was pushing it and had to be done. As an example.

 

[Athan]

"BioWare’s James Ohlen, Senior Creative Director" should very much be someone who knows what was happening.

My own experience was the levelling was awesome, if anything too easy to not run out of content. My issues started at 50 with all the bugginess of both daily quests and the dungeons. I think only Guild Wars 2 really rivalled it for broken dungeons. The same shit when we started the Operations, and we were hardly fast to do that.

 

[Ctuchik]

"BioWare’s James Ohlen, Senior Creative Director" should very much be someone who knows what was happening.

I think you're mixing up the titles here.

 

[Athan]

I think you're mixing up the titles here.

I'm quoting what the linked-to article in the OP says. This isn't just some random 'Bioware Employee'.

 

[Turamber]

I liked, and still like, the game up to maximum level (which is 55 now btw). But then I find most MMOGs get boring at maximum level, running the same instances over and over to get better loot? So damn boring :/

 

[rynnor]

I liked, and still like, the game up to maximum level (which is 55 now btw). But then I find most MMOGs get boring at maximum level, running the same instances over and over to get better loot? So damn boring :/

Yeah - the only real endgame that keeps people engaged is player created content like pvp.

 

[old.Tohtori]

"BioWare’s James Ohlen, Senior Creative Director" should very much be someone who knows what was happening.

As i said, even a high ranking one. At the end of the day, depending especially on the hierarchy etc of a company, a creative director is on equal'ish footing with a designer. He is "just a" bioware employee.

Generally a creative director knows less about working with an engine then an artist/coder would

 

[Calaen]

I really enjoyed the levelling up to 50 and the storyline and quests, which is rare for me as I am very pvp focussed.

Unfortunately once I actually got to 50 I discovered the open world pvp was terribly designed, loads of lag around the smallest of fights, every man and his dog with a sprint away ability and the zergs being rewarded with the same points for kills than a soloer. It really let the game down. Which is a shame really as I found the Commando to be a really fun and enjoyable class!

 

[Ctuchik]

I'm quoting what the linked-to article in the OP says. This isn't just some random 'Bioware Employee'.

No but he's still "only" the creative director. He's high up yes, but not THAT high up.