SWTOR: Catch-All

gore wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I don't necessarily think that the doom/gloom around TOR is just because it was subscription.. rather to me anyway that it just felt old and dated.. I never once got the feeling I was playing anything more than a WoW clone with some KOTOR trappings.

This is the fundamental issue, I think; I believe there's a market for some subscription based games, but SWTOR is clearly not one of these things. I wouldn't have kept playing SWTOR regardless of the business model selected; excepting the voice acting it felt like it was 5 years old (at least) at launch.

-Snip WoW releated bull***t-

and that's seriously bad news when a vast majority of those games are free to play and you're expecting people will pay a subscription for your own version.

I woulda continued subbing "forever" <-sarcastic but you get the idea, if they'd just focused on and managed to succeed in putting out continual story based, accessible to everyone, content. Content that was good story, made you feel like you part of the star wars experience, gave you cool looking rewards to make you feel like a badass and actually see progression of your character through the content.

Instead, we got new flashpoints and operations that were simply only adding frustration and more repetition with almost zip story. I can't even really remember the point of it....the whole rakghoul thing felt so disconnected and impersonal compared to the heroic character story i finished at level 50 that i don't even really remember it except as more frustrating content that i couldn't do solo and feel like i was really interested in and a part of. Playing any story based game is 50% the game and 50% your imagination anyhow, just like reading a good book.

So 1-50 was designed as a story based experience than at 50 you had, what? A standard frustrating repeatative loot mill experience awaiting with no more interesting or fun story telling and cutscenes? No more use of the cool and interesting companion system?

All i wanted was what they promised over and over and over...a game based on epic story telling. Not another game based on a frustrating end game loot treadmill where once the next update is out everything you did before is invalidated and worthless and easy to obtain and you just repeat this ad nauseum...for why would we do this actually?

As a player, I like narrative and storylines in my games. The class storylines in SWTOR are really good, the main storyline in TSW seems pretty interesting, and I'm really excited about the personal story in GW2.

But as a developer, I think they may be shooting themselves in the foot by adding a main storyline, because you're defining a point in the game where the player can say "I've beaten this MMO, I can stop playing it now." That's what I did with SWTOR, and I'm guessing a lot of other people did as well.

If developers are going to make story the main focus of their game, like SWTOR did, they really have to have a plan in mind for how to keep these "single players" actively subscribed. Speeding up leveling for alts probably would have kept these people around for a couple months longer. Releasing regular story content updates (ala what The Secret World is doing) could also potentially keep people subscribed.

But does WoW have a Party Jawa who "...who starts a party every chance he gets!"?

gore wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

So why do we say "it copied wow"?

Because it (and virtual every MMO conceived since WoW) copied WoW.

In more detail: ever since WoW made it big with this model, subsequent games have been trying to duplicate that success with tons of cash and nearly identical systems.

Hey, you could be a lawyer for apple.

They made curved edges on their tablet, they must have copied ours!

Did you play the game? I completely disagree with the story rant going on here along with the progression one.

Really? You guys liked Coruscant? I thought it really sucked because it was running around killing humans and human drones trying to hit that next nugget of personal story. Only to have them continually respawn as you backtracked to do things like help a stripper who wants to be rid of a stalker.

In fact, many areas outside of the newb planet were organized like a tree where you had to go back and forth and explore every branch, with things you just killed respawning on top of you and getting in your way.

Fuzzballx wrote:
gore wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

So why do we say "it copied wow"?

Because it (and virtual every MMO conceived since WoW) copied WoW.

In more detail: ever since WoW made it big with this model, subsequent games have been trying to duplicate that success with tons of cash and nearly identical systems.

Hey, you could be a lawyer for apple.

They made curved edges on their tablet, they must have copied ours!

WoW for all intensive purposes was the most successful and popular MMORPG. Fairly simple to see then why the comparisons are made. WoW made some minor improvements to the model over the years so for the most part its fairly reasonable to say XYZ copied WoW instead of trying to spend 3 pages of text detailing what was copied from what all the way back to Compuserve and Islands of Kesmai. That is just dumb and pointless.. most people here have been around long enough to know what you are talking about when you say "copied WoW"

I for one thought it was criminally stupid of Bioware/EA to launch TOR without a fully fleshed out and detailed Space Combat/Travel/Exploration/ mode that really captured the feel of all aspects of the SW "universe" Smuggling, Trading, War between the Rebels and Empire etc.. I knew it was doomed when it was apparent that it was a complete bog standard MMORPG with zero real innovation.

I mean a massive semi-persistent multi-player version of Tie Fighter would have been WAY more popular and probably netted Bioware/EA tons more money.

I enjoyed my time in TOR and would probably have maintained my sub if not for the baby but I do think Bioware made a number of mistakes, including launching in an unfinished state.

The lack of such basic features such as /roll and target of target at launch really rubbed people the wrong way and added to the perception that BW was in over their heads with an MMO.

The Hero Engine has proved challenging to optimize, particularly with load times on the later world. I think the slow load times probably drove them towards dumb design decisions, such as not being able to join instances from anywhere.

As ran mentioned, the reliance on standard endgame tiered gear check progression doesn't cut it anymore, and even the addition of a third raid couldn't keep veterans occupied.

End game open world pvp was a hot mess, with Illum being both boring and woefully un-optimized. It is clear that Arenanet ended up with the talented PvP designers from WAR and DAoC and BW got the scrubs.

Still, LoTRO proves that there is a seemingly endless supply of people willing to pay for different color horses, so color crystals and speeder skins should be a breeze to sell, assuming BW does sell access to the end game content.

Fuzzballx wrote:

...
Instead, we got new flashpoints and operations that were simply only adding frustration and more repetition with almost zip story. I can't even really remember the point of it....the whole rakghoul thing felt so disconnected and impersonal compared to the heroic character story i finished at level 50 that i don't even really remember it except as more frustrating content that i couldn't do solo and feel like i was really interested in and a part of. Playing any story based game is 50% the game and 50% your imagination anyhow, just like reading a good book.

So 1-50 was designed as a story based experience than at 50 you had, what? A standard frustrating repeatative loot mill experience awaiting with no more interesting or fun story telling and cutscenes? No more use of the cool and interesting companion system?

All i wanted was what they promised over and over and over...a game based on epic story telling. Not another game based on a frustrating end game loot treadmill where once the next update is out everything you did before is invalidated and worthless and easy to obtain and you just repeat this ad nauseum...for why would we do this actually?

Although it's not exclusive to MMOs, it's depressing to see a developer shoehorn one type of game into another where it doesn't fit.

To beat the WoW horse some more, ask any player for things it's good for and I'll bet while 'story' or quest chains may be in their list, it's not near the top of that list. MMOs just don't seem like the right framework to get a player to sit down while you tell them the story of KOTOR 3, 4, 5, to infinity (and beyond!). The ones that seem to 'stick' seem to be the players' own stories within the setting, be it the SW galaxy, Azeroth, Tyria, Telara, Norrath, or any other. None of the big stories that get people's attention have come out of these worlds have been ones written by the developers. I'm thinking of the Eve scandals, the Everspring funeral raid, the guild dramas, the race for world firsts.

I think that asking a studio like Bioware to take a back seat is difficult, and so that aspect of it was never set up to be strong.

Fuzzballx wrote:
gore wrote:
Fuzzballx wrote:

So why do we say "it copied wow"?

Because it (and virtual every MMO conceived since WoW) copied WoW.

In more detail: ever since WoW made it big with this model, subsequent games have been trying to duplicate that success with tons of cash and nearly identical systems.

Hey, you could be a lawyer for apple.

They made curved edges on their tablet, they must have copied ours!

An odd example - it's equally obvious that Samsung copies Apple's design. In both cases, similar but inferior products preceded the breakout success stories; once a WoW or an iPhone managed to unlock a massive market, the rest of the respective industries had a clear model to emulate. And emulate they have!

There's nothing fundamentally bad about duplicating a successful formula, even though there is a generally negative connotation to the phrase "WoW clone." Iteration is a genuine way for things to improve. The problem is that this particular market is absolutely flooded with games that are "like WoW, but with X" - and a lot of them are free.

What SWTOR has taught us is that even substituting "the biggest IP in the West" for X in that equation apparently still leaves you falling short of a viable subscription game.

idk.. WoW had tons of storylines.. told through in game NPC's, cut-scenes, books, quests, etc.. I powered through every single one of them skipping all dialogues, texts, cutscenes in the name of saving time. Besides.. quests I would do once and be done.. and anything that was repetitive I would do over and over anyway.. so why sit through it all.. The games framework always meant you could ignore everything and still know exactly what to do at any given moment.. if there was any confusion.. google would solve that.

Oh I know WoW had loads of stories, but they weren't the main feature (Oh, the villain of the week wants to destroy the world? Colour me surprised!). They provided the setting for the players to do their thing in.

Scratched wrote:

MMOs just don't seem like the right framework to get a player to sit down while you tell them the story of KOTOR 3, 4, 5, to infinity (and beyond!).

This is at the heart of the problem with SWTOR, and with most MMOs that try to be vehicles for a traditional narrative. The systems just aren't there to support telling a linear story in a compelling, properly paced way.

fangblackbone wrote:
Did you play the game? I completely disagree with the story rant going on here along with the progression one.

Really? You guys liked Coruscant? I thought it really sucked because it was running around killing humans and human drones trying to hit that next nugget of personal story. Only to have them continually respawn as you backtracked to do things like help a stripper who wants to be rid of a stalker.

In fact, many areas outside of the newb planet were organized like a tree where you had to go back and forth and explore every branch, with things you just killed respawning on top of you and getting in your way.

I never saw anything respawning on top of me. I loved every single planet. Honestly think that the way they structured the game was more fun than most other mmos. I do think they waited to long to use a form of phasing similar to WoW and if they did that from the start it'd would be even better, but i'd gladly do a 1-50 run in SWTOR over 1-x in any other MMO with a level format out there now.

I've never really understood the vitriol people feel for TOR. It still amazes me that it brings out such passionate responses from something which is a very competent modern MMO. It's got problems, and problems a plenty, but even so I'm surprised.

TOR's biggest misstep, IMO, was the assumption that the 1-50 experience on a single character would be enough to keep people subscribed. 1-50 on most planets (I'm looking at you, Taris) is solid enough the first time through. But the linear zone progression combined with the limited class specific content makes alt play a chore instead of a cool new exploration of new gameplay mechanics and stories. Their elder game was such a dramatic shift in experience from the leveling game that it left me feeling a little dazed, and I've been playing MMOs almost exclusively for years. With a poor elder game and a frustrating alt game, there wasn't much left for folks to do and they'd just drift away. They made a good boxed game, but didn't put in the content which would convince people to pay a recurring subscription fee.

All the other stuff is relatively minor, but if you can't keep your elder players interested enough to keep the community growing, and you don't have enough market spend to keep new players coming in, this kind of player curve is pretty much normal.

From personal experience, I jumped back in last month after the server transfers went live. I didn't have any drive to play Nat or Zera at max level, even with the new dailies, but did very much enjoy running up to 50 on the republic side. Not the republic side so much as new story and quest content. It's a competent game, just not a really good one.

ranalin wrote:

I never saw anything respawning on top of me. I loved every single planet. Honestly think that the way they structured the game was more fun than most other mmos. I do think they waited to long to use a form of phasing similar to WoW and if they did that from the start it'd would be even better, but i'd gladly do a 1-50 run in SWTOR over 1-x in any other MMO with a level format out there now.

I have to agree, Ran. There is a lot that TOR did really well, and will continue to do well: animations, combat math, class balance, story, etc. To me the thing that really kills TOR is the feeling that every world is static. We could feasibly run the exact same content with little blocks and squares, and it would be not much different. I want to feel like the world can be interacted with, and TOR has yet to deliver that experience. That was the biggest, best thing about SWG to me: the feeling that we as players got to shape the galaxy. I won't get into the negative things about SWG or a comparison of the two. I will only say that in this aspect of SWG, BioWare could have learned a thing or two. I'm still hoping that we'll see these sorts of smaller changes that have big impacts as things go forward.

Also, until I see the actual items that they'll be selling in the store, I'll keep my sub going to earn those extra bonus credits. Most likely, I'll be cancelling my sub once F2P starts, but I hope that by then I'll have accumulated enough points to buy some of the features I feel like I can't live without.

TOR did a lot of things decently. I don't know that I can say combat animations were one of them, but that's an issue I have with SW games writ large; you hand me a lightsaber and then I run around swinging a Nerf sword, which is, and always has been a huge disconnect for me. As for the art, I played it on a brand new machine where I could max out every setting in the game, and the most important art aspect in the entire game still looked awful, by which I mean my character. The equipment art in FFXI was as good or better in some cases than anything I saw in TOR, which is unforgiveable in this day and age, doubly so when you look at the amount of effort going into WoW's art, or LoTRO's, or Rift's. It's roughly on par with DDO's artwork.

However, and I think Fuzzball has a disconnect here, is that they really did try to clone what WoW did: make an accessible game with easy progression content and a challenging endgame marked by a ridiculous loot grind. While MMOs have been a loot grind since EQ, and the mechanics haven't changed a great deal either, Blizzard broke the genre open with WoW. I don't know that there would be a TOR if WoW hadn't pulled over 10 million subs world wide. Same goes for other MMOs that have launched since November 2004. I feel that games like Rift, WAR, LoTRO and TESO owe a lot to the groundwork that Blizzard laid down at the same time that they should be ignoring its' success. The people in charge of MMOs, truly in charge-holding the purse strings-in charge need to lower their sights as to what really constitutes success in this genre. Expecting any MMO to duplicate what WoW did is like expecting a C-average student in high school to get a 1600 on the SAT. Possible? Sure. Likely? Not really.

As for subscription MMOs, I don't think they're cooked. I do, however think that expecting a reskin of all the popular tropes of the genre to do well on a sub model is ludicrous. But given that EVE and Rift are still doing fairly well on a subscription model highlights that it absolutely can be done, so long as you keep your goals bounded by the reality of the market.

I don't know that I can say combat animations were one of them, but that's an issue I have with SW games writ large; you hand me a lightsaber and then I run around swinging a Nerf sword, which is, and always has been a huge disconnect for me.

Yeah, using a lightsaber with the Tera combat system would be a hell of a lot of fun!

karmajay wrote:
I don't know that I can say combat animations were one of them, but that's an issue I have with SW games writ large; you hand me a lightsaber and then I run around swinging a Nerf sword, which is, and always has been a huge disconnect for me.

Yeah, using a lightsaber with the Tera combat system would be a hell of a lot of fun!

I was thinking that what they should have done - and I'll admit it would take a lot of resources and creative thinking - would to have Tera style melee combat and Mass Effect style shooting combat for the non-force using classes.

At any rate, I've offically hit a wall once I got to Corellia. I have 2 levels to go but at the rate I'm playing that's still a good 10-12 hours of pure slog. I played Guild Wars 1 with GWJers yesterday and even for a 8 year old game the combat is a lot more fun and dynamic than SWTOR.

jdzappa wrote:
karmajay wrote:
I don't know that I can say combat animations were one of them, but that's an issue I have with SW games writ large; you hand me a lightsaber and then I run around swinging a Nerf sword, which is, and always has been a huge disconnect for me.

Yeah, using a lightsaber with the Tera combat system would be a hell of a lot of fun!

I was thinking that what they should have done - and I'll admit it would take a lot of resources and creative thinking - would to have Tera style melee combat and Mass Effect style shooting combat for the non-force using classes.

At any rate, I've offically hit a wall once I got to Corellia. I have 2 levels to go but at the rate I'm playing that's still a good 10-12 hours of pure slog. I played Guild Wars 1 with GWJers yesterday and even for a 8 year old game the combat is a lot more fun and dynamic than SWTOR.

lol personal play styles. me and some of my old WoW guild mates were talking about this. We played this for a month or 2 while waiting for Burning Crusade to drop. We ended up deciding that the reason we quit playing before that was that the combat bored us out of our minds and we werent a fan of everything being instanced. Luckily the change up in GW2 makes it interesting again. Anyway completely disagree about GW being more dynamic or fun for that matter.

So, upon news of this going FTP, and having slogged through several pages of comments in this thread, I downloaded this a couple of days ago and started a trial account. Having run a Jedi Guardian and a Bounty Hunter Mercenary to level 11, I feel I certainly got my time's worth. I didn't run additional characters from each side to see how much of the story overlaps, but one can almost treat the first dozen levels as a game of its own, with amazing replayability.

Once you get off the starter planet though, the "free" aspects really kick in. You're barred from quite a few functions. Does anybody know if things like AH and bank will be available to free accounts?

MoonDragon wrote:

So, upon news of this going FTP, and having slogged through several pages of comments in this thread, I downloaded this a couple of days ago and started a trial account. Having run a Jedi Guardian and a Bounty Hunter Mercenary to level 11, I feel I certainly got my time's worth. I didn't run additional characters from each side to see how much of the story overlaps, but one can almost treat the first dozen levels as a game of its own, with amazing replayability.

Once you get off the starter planet though, the "free" aspects really kick in. You're barred from quite a few functions. Does anybody know if things like AH and bank will be available to free accounts?

There's a chart on the swtor website somewhere comparing the free to subscription features. I think auction house was available to free but was limited in the # of auctions you could have going at one time.

MoonDragon wrote:

Once you get off the starter planet though, the "free" aspects really kick in. You're barred from quite a few functions. Does anybody know if things like AH and bank will be available to free accounts?

I think the assumption is that they well allow you to unlock features like that via the cash shop, hopefully with account wide purchases for the more basic features.

There's a chart on the swtor website somewhere comparing the free to subscription features. I think auction house was available to free but was limited in the # of auctions you could have going at one time.

http://www.swtor.com/free/features

F2P Chart wrote:

Story Content
Players can play their full class stories from levels 1 to 50.

Character Creation Choices
Some character creation options, such as species, are limited to subscribers.

Warzones
Free-to-Play members will have limited weekly access to Warzones.

Flashpoints
Free-to-Play members will have limited weekly access to Flashpoints.

Space Missions
Free-to-Play members will have a weekly cap on Space Missions.

Operations
Only subscription members can access Operations.

Travel Features
Subscription members have access to all travel functionality, making getting around the world easier.

Game Login
Subscription members will always be in login queues ahead of free players.

Galactic Trade Network
Subscription members can post up to 50 auctions for sale.

Most limitations on f2p players are put there to combat farmers and scammers. That's usually the reason behind gold, mail, communications, and AH limits.

I cringe when f2p games let free accounts have PC vendors that persist when the account logs out. WORST.IDEA.EVAR.

fangblackbone wrote:

I cringe when f2p games let free accounts have PC vendors that persist when the account logs out. WORST.IDEA.EVAR.

What? Are you talking about SWG or TOR? If you're talking about TOR, what?

ranalin wrote:
jdzappa wrote:
karmajay wrote:
I don't know that I can say combat animations were one of them, but that's an issue I have with SW games writ large; you hand me a lightsaber and then I run around swinging a Nerf sword, which is, and always has been a huge disconnect for me.

Yeah, using a lightsaber with the Tera combat system would be a hell of a lot of fun!

I was thinking that what they should have done - and I'll admit it would take a lot of resources and creative thinking - would to have Tera style melee combat and Mass Effect style shooting combat for the non-force using classes.

At any rate, I've offically hit a wall once I got to Corellia. I have 2 levels to go but at the rate I'm playing that's still a good 10-12 hours of pure slog. I played Guild Wars 1 with GWJers yesterday and even for a 8 year old game the combat is a lot more fun and dynamic than SWTOR.

lol personal play styles. me and some of my old WoW guild mates were talking about this. We played this for a month or 2 while waiting for Burning Crusade to drop. We ended up deciding that the reason we quit playing before that was that the combat bored us out of our minds and we werent a fan of everything being instanced. Luckily the change up in GW2 makes it interesting again. Anyway completely disagree about GW being more dynamic or fun for that matter.

I should elaborate - with the relatively new 7 hero system, Guild Wars feels somewhat like a tactical RTS where you're controlling not just your character but an entire team. That's improved the combat greatly (I'm not even sure heroes were even available when you played several years ago). I also like how you have a set number of skills, unlike SWTOR where you have several hotbars of skills, many of which feel redundant or only situationally useful.

Now, I agree with you that the instancing is annoying and that overall the game is dated. SWTOR is also miles ahead of GW 1 when it comes to cutscenes and storyline. Honestly, SWTOR's class storylines seem to be superior to GW 2. During the first beta weekend, I was still still playing SWTOR heavily and was turned off by GW 2's talking heads and slightly cheesy dialogue. Then I played Diablo 3 and realized that games like SWTOR and Mass Effect had probably set my expectations too high. If SWTOR were less of a grind and had an original combat system, I'd probably not be cancelling my subscription.

So I played 13 of my 15 free levels over the weekend and in my attempt to treat it as a purely single player experience, I have to say I found the mmo trappings of grinding and the way combat works to be tolerable, but what really bothered me were:
1) waiting for a quest mob or chest or whatever to repop because someone else had just been through the area (edit: so yeah for those complaining about instancing, in my sp-centric universe, more instancing = better because waiting around is dumb)
2) the areas are so bloody big. even making full use of taxis, so much time is wasted walking around, especially to get to a trainer and buy/sell stuff.

A lesser gripe, because up to the point I reached I didn't feel it mattered all that much, is that the game is horrible at telling you what your crew (crafting?) skills are for.

Still, those gripes aside, it is a heck of a lot of generally enjoyable gaming to be had for the price of free.

juv3nal wrote:

2) the areas are so bloody big. even making full use of taxis, so much time is wasted walking around, especially to get to a trainer and buy/sell stuff.

Were you playing Republic? Try Empire; Dromund Kaas is far more compact and enjoyable.

Pex-Corrh wrote:
juv3nal wrote:

2) the areas are so bloody big. even making full use of taxis, so much time is wasted walking around, especially to get to a trainer and buy/sell stuff.

Were you playing Republic? Try Empire; Dromund Kaas is far more compact and enjoyable.

But...but...I'm a good guy. This is just a Sith trick to
lure me to the dark side. Must...resist...

(ok I'll maybe give it a shot once this guy hits my freebie lvl cap.)
Incidentally, what are people's thoughts on most interesting/best storylines by class/side?