Decline in quality of PvP

[dudetus]

It is important to keep in mind too why SWTOR is in it's current situation. They were pretty WoW with a space theme. They also ignored a large percentage of their playerbase. In terms of monetary success, SWTOR is a failure in that regard. Had they followed the advice of their fledgling player base, they might have profitably ended up with a decent MMO and someday a competitor to WoW. But yes, the new model seems to be doing better (at least it's not hemorrhaging subscribers).

I suppose it's probably due to the past, but I personally do not trust EA - they've had too many shallow games, too many games with restrictive DRM, and ruined to many franchises - between that and a ton of goodwill lost, if a game says "EA" on it, more often that not, I will pass it up simply for the fact that it has EA. These days, there have been too many bad experiences. I feel though like my actions are vindicated by the results. For example, I loved Simcity 4; I still play it at times. But when Simcity 5 came out, I refused to buy it. My decision turned out to be very prescient, the game had unstable servers, caused solely by their decision to make an "always online" portion of thegame.

Sorry for de-railing the discussion with my SWtOR example. I myself just love to whole Star Wars as a genre and I'm personally glad how they stepped away from their destruction and turned the game around from a total failure to an MMO with slight hope - but isn't Star Wars always about hope ?

Big studios chase after money. They may at times provide innovation in terms of graphics power (although even then, often new engines are developed independently now) - just look at CoD, which uses the same id Tech 3 engine (although it has seen some modifications) as Quake III. By 2013 standards though, it's outdated. Crysis is an example of a game that did try to push the graphics boundary. The game had shallow gameplay, but I do applaud their willingness to push the envelope.

In terms of innovative gameplay - well, it almost always tend to come from indie studios these days. I personally find myself buying mainly from indies as well, although there are some AAA games I still play, most notably Shogun 2. I buy games for depth of game play, the mod community, and the overall attitude of the developer.

Exactly. As STS is still one of the smallest fish in the big mobile gaming develeoper pond, they should try to do the same Amnesia and DayZ did on PC. As u mentioned though, PL is considered as a breakthrough on mobile gaming but as the mobile players are considered more casual than PC gamers, one innovative breakthrough isn't yet enough as it happened before mobile gaming became more "serious" business. STS needs to find a way to bond the gamers, when thinking in a wide scale, and I myself see the solutions to be innovative regarding mobile gaming technology and and to actually care about their players on community level. They already had that and I see no reason why they can't do it again. I can't believe how they turned into "Zynga" as they aren't big enough organization to compete against the big gaming companies in terms of launching new games. Possibly they thought the mobile gaming's casuality to be an issue and because of that turned into their current strategy while they should have kept doing on what they were doing. Being innovative and bonding with their customers.

I think they're more comparable than you think they are. The playerbase is at times, more casual, but at the same time, as you have noted, the elements that make up a successful game or not are very similar.

I do believe that PL did push - they tried something that had not been done before, putting a game with enough depth to be a light PC MMO on a phone. Yes Gameloft and Zynga are definitely warning signs. I'll be blunt - I do not think that there is as much money in "social" or "mobile" gaming as people think. People used to talk about how the market would be several times the size (in revenues) of the PC market. When the first games hit the iPhone and Android, they were being sold in the range of $1-$5. The amount of sales for games priced more like at PC price points has been low and the number of people willing to pay up for the micropayments - I cannot imagine that it will be more than the PC and likely substantially less.

What it means though is that any company that wants to capitalize on mobile gaming had best do it's best for its community. Notice how quickly the top PvP community emptied out - right now PL is a PvP desert for hardcore players. Contrast this with games like WoW where people have played on for years. There are sites to help on "WoW addiction". That in and of itself is a testament to what they have created - a game so good that people need help when quitting! What does it mean? It means that mistakes could be much more costly than in the PC market and the consequences felt much sooner. Realistically, I cannot imagine PL having the kind of in depth theorycrafting and PvP community that it had between 2010 to 2012.

Yes, as mobile gaming is more casual, the consumer's opinions change more quickly and errors begin to show sooner than they show in PC games. But, this can also be an advantage to mobile game studios as the errors are shown more quickly they can correct to the errors more quickly. Too bad this hasn't been shown on STS side. And as u said long time ago, with every generation of new players, the average skill decreases. As STS can't keep hold of their oldest customers on PL (I started playing PL on November 2010 and recently quit) the average skill level decreases more rapidly. This affects mostly to the oldies who get frustrated with the new generation of players who don't know their roles within their classes and do not know the running/boss strategies etc. I myself took this issue in a thread some time ago (I'll post link to it in here as I find it). PL's current maps are more or less designed to be run on elixir. As the BSM (BlackSmoke Mountain) arrived I wasn't able to clear the first map of the new campaign with a random team as the first boss was too powerful for our unorganized team. It took me finally a guild run with Unity to clear the maps as the random games weren't able to kill the boss with me no matter how I tried to tell them the straregy. The daily blessings and daily elixir are the few main reasons I also blame the dramatic average skill drop as the newest players get accustomed to running with elixirs on the very first day.

Edit: Here's the link to my thread: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...d-the-End-Game. The post is made mostly out of elixirs and how they ruin the true game experience and decreases the average skill level and how IMO end game has turned P2P and P2W format.

But about the community. STS just needs to acknowledge us and listen to us to gain back our trust. PvP issues would have long ago been fixed if STS had listened to the community and made those changes. Even though time has passed and there will never be same era again as 2010-2012 was in this game, but it doesn't mean all hope is lost. We as a community just want to be acknowledged and listened.

And I do apologize for possible grammatic errors. English is not my mother tongue and few errors inevitably sneak to my posts.