New content?
Just look at the latest patch date on the launcher.
Not a good signā¦
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Yeah, I log in once in a while to see if another chapter has been released. Been a while since thereās been anything new. Not holding my breath.
Donāt expect anything large coming down the pipeline. Itās mostly going to be small reworks and balancing for awhile.
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Personally I have more or less given up hope. TSW (note TSW) was one of my all-time favourite games. I found SWL a step back but I replayed it all the way through for the sake of the story. I hung around for the kick-in-the-teeth which was the Morninglight expansion. Since then I have cancelled my patron status and just log in occasionally for nostalgiaās sake.
TBH, I have no interest in repetitive dungeon delving so there is nothing in this latest ābiggest patch everā that has any real significance to me. Iām reaching the stage where I will delete the game from my system because it reminds me of what might have been. Next year is PC upgrade time so I certainly wonāt be reinstalling it if there is no statement on new material by then.
** SAD **
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yea i dont expect anything big as much as id love someā¦
Why would new content be a bad investment?
I donāt think it would be a bad investment. I have three level 50 toons, but Iām just restarting play with a few friends, with the aim of following the story from the beginning, with no transfer of stuff from existing toons, watching cut scenes in full and reading all the lore as we go along: the story is just so good. I was disappointed by the quality of the Morninglight/Africa expansion, but thereās surely potential to gain new players by focussing on good atmospheric story.
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They need a full team of empoyees even to make something as insignificant as South Africa update. Writers, artists, voice actors and sound engineers, etc. And for what, for like a thousand active players?
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What do you suggest would a good investment for them?
To be honest I canāt see any way in which a significant investment in this game would pay off financial terms. The game engine is obsolete and does not deliver the sort of quality which would attract significant new custom - theyāve never even fixed the issue where opponents die before the attack animation! New storyline material would require writers and artists and voice-actors etc. but who are they aiming at? Most younger gamers are acclimated to high quality graphics and fast moving action. If you search for storyline games SWL does not even show up. At best new content would attract back a few lapsed players. I anticipate the game will trundle on until the end-game crowd lose interest or the cost of maintaining the servers exceeds the revenue.
There is no other game I have found like this one. I always recommend it when people ask what I play or if they are looking for something else.
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Same. Iāve even had people tell me about other games that they think are the same, but they never are.
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Yes, I keep looking (because I agree with the observation that the game engine is dated), but games using modern software all lack the atmosphere, storytelling, and immersive nature (though a little of that was lost in the change from tsw to swl). I think whatās really required in the long run is major investment to produce both a new game (ie shift to new game engine) and new content. That being said, I think new content could boost the game. After all there are games (eg ESO, SWTOR) doing more successfully with clunky game mechanics, so an investment in more good content ought to make SWL a winner.
Rebuilding the game from scratch while keeping the lore, the location and the story might help. New engine, good combat system, interesting mechanics, modern graphics - all the things this game was lacking at the release and still lacks now. That would take years with a dedicated team of like hundred people, so safe to say itās never gonna happen.
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too soon.
I agree that SWTOR and ESO are doing better but there are a couple of things to bear in mind.
SWTOR has a massive potential fanbase via the Star Wars franchise and a series of successful standalone games. The only blot on that landscape is the trainwreck that was Star Wars Galaxies. That started well but there were bugs and various problems leading to the effective rework when they completely changed the combat system and rendered the game boring. The original SWTOR release had a lovely storyline (actually, 8 of them depending on character type - some are better than others) but IMHO later expansions have been less successful. I have abandoned the latest very linear expansion. If I go back to the game it will be to play the storyline of one or two of the classes which I never completed. If you have never played it then the F2P version will give you all the original storylines.
ESO came through on the back of a massively successful run of single player games. Oblivion was a bit of a blip (partly due to the interface changes to accomodate console play) but Skyrim was a superb game and has some massive player generated content packages which rival in size and complexity the DLC packs Bethesda released for the original game. The real problem I find with ESO nowadays is that it is simply too big.
TSW had a real problem with name recognition at the beginning but people who persisted had a rewarding experience. Unfortunately the new combat system that came in with Tokyo made the whole thing a grind rather than an interactive adventure story. The move to SWL dramatically simplified combat (far too much, IMHO) and removed the real synergy you had between weapon types in TSW. The changes to the quest structure certainly made the game simpler for new players but overall made the game less challenging and less satisfactory to many of the original players. Also, the grotesque over-monitization put many people off.
A complete rebuild with the underlying lore and story might produce a better, more modern game but I canāt see it attacting many new players or ever making money. I still feel cheated that the Morninglight plotline and African zones turned out to be an uninteresting back-yard.
I expect to buy or build a new PC over Xmas.New Year. I canāt see SWL being one of the things I install on the new box. TSW and to a lesser extent SWL have given me much pleasure but I think it is time to admit that the current game is well past its sell-by date and move on.
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For what itās worth, I actually really enjoyed the Morninglight content, which is meant to be a pit-stop between Tokyo and Congo, which hasnāt happened yet.
I loved the complexity of TSWās Ability Wheel, for which ESO sort of taps into the same reward pathways in my brain - if there could be synergy between the weapons, itād be a whole other ball-game for SWL. I can dream.
A complete rebuild, were it ever to come about, might be able to be a hugely successful game, if they could just advertise it well!
I really liked the ability wheel too, and very much like synergy between weapons with the passives from one weapon altering others. However, as a software developer I can well understand synergies being a huge headache when trying to balance the game (you would need a huge team for testing and tweaking). One approach that I think might work is cosmetic synergies ā¦ where passives different weapons would alter the visual and audible effects of the various abilities of other weapons, without making the kind of significant functional difference that would make everyone want to use the same skill combinations.
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I often wonder if they knew one of the biggest disappointments for us would be the removal of the ability to use most passives with any weapon. I think I have only seen one person say they likee the change.