AJediKnight
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Posts posted by AJediKnight
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I think it's more a case of people buying an apple, knowing all along it was an apple, yet complaining that it isn't an orange because they personally prefer oranges.
When there are no oranges for sale, people wish very hard that an apple was an orange, even if they know it isn't.
I knew what TOR was going to be ever since they announced it would be trinity-based years ago. I obviously bought the game knowing what I was getting into.
Now that TOR has failed as a WoW killer, and might, in fact, be the biggest flop in MMO history, I think it's fair to question where things went wrong. Theme park proponents will crow all night and day that this was just another example of an MMO that 'wasn't polished enough.' But is that really the case?
I tend to believe that a lot of people who got into MMOs with WoW are sick and tired of this formula without realizing or knowing that an alternative ever existed. If WoW was your first time at the rodeo, chances are excellent you've never even played a sandbox. It's time for a developer to take a serious shot at one.
I mean, is pissing away $100+ million really a sound investment just because the theme park supporters scream and shout that it has to be so? How many AOCs, WARs and, yes, TORs need to fail before a major publisher steers their ship in another direction?
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Also excellent reading, with quotes from Messrs Schubert and Vogel throughout.
Great posts. Listening to the interview now.
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I for one love the new effect, this makes my game play allot more enjoyable, keep the fixes rolling in.
Now if only we can have a Stealth bar & travel time delays tweeked we are golden : )
We totally needed another thread about this.
Also, please tell me this was sarcasm? The new system is an abomination.
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Complaining that MMO's are MMO's.
I take it you weren't around when MMOs weren't 'MMOs?'
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There is a reason for that. Well, 2 actually:
1) There is no money it in for game developers
2) The desire for a sandbox MMO is not shared by a majority of MMO gamers.
In my opinion, these 2 hurdles alone are insurmountable. I loved SWG in it's heyday too, but the MMO genre has moved on. Maybe it is time for you to move on as well.
Doubtful.
The MMO genre hasn't moved on since the days of EQ. WoW was and is essentially a polished EQ clone (as is TOR). If the industry should have taken any kind of a lesson from SWG, it was either: a) don't release a game and then change your mind about what you want that game to be 6 months after launch, and/or b) don't release a game if you have absolutely no idea how to balance classes.
SWG wasn't a failure because everyone hated (or hates) sandboxes, SWG was a failure because the design team was terrible at managing the game post-launch, and the CU/CE both tried to transform the game from a sandbox into an EQ clone.
The tune you seem to be whistling after the Titanic of MMOs went down is that people should stop building ships. The actual lesson you should be learning is that people need to stop running ships into icebergs.
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Yes, as others have said, if you trade one of these armors to the other side, they change in appearance.
There are a handful of BOE hoodless robes for Sith Juggs on the Empire side. The Republic has none such robes. I decided to transfer one between factions, since I very much desired to see my hair again as a Jedi. Imagine my surprise and dismay when my hoodless Sith robe (which was blue... it wasn't even friggin' black) morphed into a very generic brown, hooded Jedi cloak.
I am starting to hate this game.
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The space combat is terrible. Absolutely terrible.
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Apparently you don't know Eve Online.
I do. But I also know that EVE is flawed in two specific ways that have always kept it small market:
1) Not everyone likes playing as 'a ship.'
2) The nature of the skill system in EVE means that the mountain that new players need to climb gets higher every day. So no matter what EVE does, with each passing hour, it becomes more unapproachable for incoming players.
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...So you thinkw e should stop looking backwards at "themeparks" which are actually "newer" than sandbox games and return to sandbox? Interesting backwards concept there.
Nobody has made a serious attempt to make a grade-A western sandbox MMO since SWG, a game which would arguably still be around today in some capacity if SOE hadn't repeatedly screwed the pooch.
SWG was designed in the days of low-budget MMOs. I have yet to see even a $20 million dollar sandbox or hybrid, let alone a $100 million one.
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The problem with the whole "Building and perhaps losing" idea is that if the game exists in real life, I am not going to be able to help defend my little town for more then a few hours a day if that.
I don't want to spend 3 months, years whatever building a sweet castle and then having it torched at 3AM because I was sleeping while the college age crew was just getting in from the bar.
You'd have to set up so many restrictions it would be ridiculous.
Not really. As an example, SWG's bases would become vulnerable at certain times. When I played the game, this was random, but I bet you could set it up so that your base would only become vulnerable at primetime, maybe 2-3 nights a week, when you actually had the bodies on to defend it.
My hypothetical MMO isn't out to grief you
. We're all about fun here. If someone wants to conquer your castle, they're going to have to possess the stones to do it when every man you've got is hunkered down inside. We're not interested in a cheap 3 a.m. victory here at AJediKnight-Co. -
Isn't that "focus" or am I missing something?
With regards to the "trinity":
Can you realistically imagine many creatures surviving one hit, let alone 10 minutes worth, especially with a lightsaber or a laser rifle?
MMO/RPG combat isn't really supposed to represent real life combat.
Maybe that's a signal for the genre to change?
Real life soldiers generally don't survive multiple bullet wounds, but that doesn't stop people from fighting wars. Somehow, 'the system' finds a way to work around the feeble limitations of mortal man.
I'm not saying that MMOs should feature one-shot KO mechanics, but we can do better than this. A 'hard fight' shouldn't be governed by the ability of 15 or so people to repeat 4 mechanics 20 times over the course of 10 minutes. A 'hard fight' should be a battle that actually taxes the dynamic ability of a player to evolve to the circumstances. Boss coming right at me? Maybe I use the force to pull a destructable pillar down on its head. Or maybe not, since in a theme park I'm running around panic stricken until the tank regains aggro.
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I'd have to agree with OP's basic premise. If Minecraft's surprising rampant success doesn't tell the AAA dinosaurs something about how they're doing business, well, they just aren't paying attention.
I totally forgot to mention minecraft XD *scurries to edit OP.*
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It's a long post. Don't read it if you don't want to.
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The hybrid, and even the hybrid that leans sandbox, really is the direction that MMOs should be headed in, as much as it might make a vocal minority scream in fury. What we're seeing in TOR is the net result of collective burnout with these games. The theme park has become so predictable in nature that you can take MMO player X and insert him into theme park Y, and within minutes he has not only mastered the basics, but is (if he hasn't taken to the forums to moan about the predictably dry nature of the starting zone) racing headlong towards the completely hollow endgame.
If I were designing an MMO from the ground up today, I'd be looking at a couple of things:
1) The trinity system isn't a realistic representation of combat. I'm not saying that everything should be a twitch system. However, if we were to envision a genuine approach to going out and fighting, say, a dragon, you're probably not lining up one or two huge, slow guys in plate armor to shout obscenities at the beast while 18 other people poke it in the behind with sticks and spells. Can you imagine this working in real life? Can you imagine the dragon not immediately turning around and gobbling up half the raid, saving the 'tough nut' warriors for the end? A real-life pack of wolves might not be sentient on the level of humans, but they know to prey on the weak and the young -- they always always ALWAYS pick the soft target. It's difficult to stomach the idea that a dragon wouldn't have a similar basic understanding of the nature of the world.
Real-life (and believable fantasy) combat relies on two mechanics -- avoidance, and mitigation, and the latter can only take you so far when that dragon lowers its forearm to crush you. Ergo, a bigger reliance on dodging and movement is needed. Additionally, all members of a group should be required to be more self-reliant about their own survival -- the age of the dedicated healer, whose sole job is to stand behind the lines showering players with mystical white light -- needs to come to a close. Not only do healers remain a woefully underplayed class in every theme park MMO, they a) lack believability, and b) lack an epic feel for a majority of gamers. Personally, I look at MMO healers as cads who would rather stare at a series of bars all game than actually swing their sword, and I am hardly alone in this. I would never play one, and that's never going to change.
2) The rise of social media has made gaming far more popular than it ever was before, but not all gaming appeals to all people. The thing about MMOs is that their original intent was to allow gamers to live their story in fantastic environs. But not everyone's story need revolve around combat -- a lot of people might get their kicks out of homesteading, farming, milling, weaving, serving as a castle steward, a politician, etc.
The problem with themepark games is there really is only one avenue to power, and it involves slugging it out in combat, either with players or PCs. In this sense, the 'promise' of the genre has been betrayed, and folded into a single, generalized mechanic -- kill or quit. When I look at the rampant success of social games that involve no combat -- titles like The Sims and Farmville and Minecraft -- I see a vast, untapped resource of potential MMOers who might pay $15 a month to own, say, a tavern, or an inn, or work as a famous musician. And if you did a good enough job integrating all these working parts into a system where they were all required for a faction to prevail in warfare, then I really think you'd be talking about the game that would be the 'next WoW.'
3) Finally, there is a lack of personal investment and personal loss in game worlds that is draining the life out of the genre. An example of personal investment could be anything: from a house that you own in a town, to a small fort that you and a few friends defend, to a starship crewed by an entire guild.
Let's look at WoW: when you go into an Alterac Valley and you lose after 25 minutes, what happens? Are the Frostwolves finally driven from Alterac once and for all? Are the resources of the valley now directed to the benefit of the Alliance? Does anyone even give a damn who wins or loses? The thing about instanced everything; about a game world that neither rewards nor punishes for victory and defeat, is that you wind up with a lot of people who don't really give a crap what happens anywhere.
In SWG, players could build towns, fortresses, etc. And if those bases -- which you had worked hundreds of hours to earn -- were destroyed by the enemy, they were gone. You'd have to go farm up another one. Now, the 'modern MMOer' might find such a concept ludicrous, but, if done correctly, loss can actually spurn an increased sense of investment in the gameworld. If my little fort gets torched, I am a) going to defend the hell out of my next one, and b) want to get revenge on the people who did it. When you lose a WZ, do you really sit around brooding about the fact that the Imperial transport on Alderaan got shot down? Do you mourn the deaths of the hundred or so invisible NPCs who manned that ship? Of course not. You don't care, and the game doesn't even want you to care.
In our fictional MMO, let's say you and your guild stumble onto a narrow valley, surrounded on three sides by high mountains, and fed by a fast-flowing river. There is land to till, and space enough for several villages. You set about ordering the land immediately, but as your investment in the region grows, you begin to worry increasingly about jealous outsiders who would raid or conquer your budding kingdom. You build a series of outlying forts to warn of oncoming armies, and then construct a mighty citadel in an easily-defensible high spot. It has taken a lot to accomplish all this, and maybe, one day, you'll lose it all. But you'd fight like hell to prevent that from happening.
Would you fight like hell to avoid queuing up for Boarding Party for the thousandth time? I think not.
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And there you have it. I don't believe sandbox MMOs are the future -- people require a degree of structure. There will always be a large crowd of folks who like to raid, and like mindless PvP, and don't derive any enjoyment out of the non-combat elements that the genre could offer. But as a game designer, I would be looking to incorporate all crowds, and I think there's room enough in these games to please everyone.
The problem is that the investors behind these $100 million dollar goliaths are only concerned with the bottom line, and as they see it, 'if Blizzard did it, so can we.' The problem is, 'Blizzard did it' 7 years ago, and even if the genre hasn't moved on, people have. People have learned to burn through content far faster than it can be released; people have learned to race to the level cap, only to find that the bulk of the game's resources have been squandered on what will wind up being (if a player sticks with a main) the shortest portion of the content. It is a system that cannot endure forever -- it should only take one $100 million dollar MMO flop to call the system into question, yet in the past 5 years, we've seen game after game tank when the 'tried and true' method failed to prove lasting.
The first major company to realize this, and to design a game that lets go of so many of these dusty old habits and design a quality, hybrid product, is going to make WoW -- even at its apex -- look like a complete joke.
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SWTOR right now however, is suffering a "death by a thousand paper cuts" as it were, with regards to quality-of-life design issues, and the unguided state of post-50 content. There are myriad little design annoyances with the game that when compounded, have a sizable affect on peoples' perceptions of the game. Combine that with the sink-or-swim nature of content once you reach L50, and it's no wonder server populations are already dwindling.
I agree.
The hybrid, and even the hybrid that leans sandbox, really is the direction that MMOs should be headed in, as much as it will make a vocal minority scream in fury.
If I were designing an MMO from the ground up today, I'd be looking at a couple of things:
1) The trinity system isn't a realistic representation of combat. I'm not saying that everything should be a twitch system. However, if we were to envision a realistic approach to going out and fighting, say, a dragon, you're probably not lining up one or two huge, slow guys in plate armor to shout obscenities at the beast while 18 other people poke it in the behind with sticks and spells.
Real-life (and believable fantasy) combat relies on two mechanics -- avoidance, and mitigation, and the latter can only take you so far when that dragon lowers its forearm to crush you. Ergo, a bigger reliance on dodging and movement is needed. Additionally, all members of a group should be required to be more self-reliant about their own survival -- the age of the dedicated healer, whose sole job is to stand behind the lines showering players with mystical white light -- needs to come to a close. Not only do healers remain a woefully underplayed class in every theme park MMO, they a) lack believability, and b) lack an epic feel for a majority of gamers. Personally, I look at MMO healers as cads who would rather stare at a series of bars all game than actually swing their sword, and I am hardly alone in this. I would never play one, and that's never going to change.
2) The rise of social media has made gaming far more popular than it ever was before, but not all gaming appeals to all people. The thing about MMOs is that their original intent was to allow gamers to live their story in fantastic environs. But not everyone's story need revolve around combat -- a lot of people might get their kicks out of homesteading, farming, milling, weaving, serving as a castle steward, a politician, etc.
The problem with themepark games is there really is only one avenue to power, and it involves slugging it out in combat, either with players or PCs. In this sense, the 'promise' of the genre has been betrayed, and folded into a single, generalized mechanic -- kill or quit. When I look at the rampant success of social games that involve no combat -- titles like The Sims and Farmville -- I see a vast, untapped resource of potential MMOers who might pay $15 a month to own, say, a tavern, or an inn, or work as a famous musician. And if you did a good enough job integrating all these working parts into a system where they were all required for a faction to prevail in warfare, then I really think you'd be talking about the game that would be the 'next WoW.'
3) Finally, there is a lack of personal investment and personal loss in game worlds that is draining the life out of the genre. An example of personal investment could be anything: from a house that you own in a town, to a small fort that you and a few friends defend, to a starship crewed by an entire guild.
Let's look at WoW: when you go into an Alterac Valley and you lose after 25 minutes, what happens? Are the Frostwolves finally driven from Alterac once and for all? Are the resources of the valley now directed to the benefit of the Alliance? Does anyone even give a damn who wins or loses? The thing about instanced everything; about a game world that neither rewards nor punishes for victory and defeat, is that you wind up with a lot of people who don't really give a crap what happens anywhere.
In SWG, players could build towns, fortresses, etc. And if those bases -- which you had worked hundreds of hours to earn -- were destroyed by the enemy, they were gone. You'd have to go farm up another one. Now, the 'modern MMOer' might find such a concept ludicrous, but, if done correctly, loss can actually spurn an increased sense of investment in the gameworld. If my little fort gets torched, I am a) going to defend the hell out of my next one, and b) want to get revenge on the people who did it. When you lose a WZ, do you really sit around brooding about the fact that the Imperial transport on Alderaan got shot down? Do you mourn the deaths of the hundred or so invisible NPCs who manned that ship? Of course not. You don't care, and the game doesn't even want you to care.
In our fictional MMO, let's say you and your guild stumble onto a narrow valley, surrounded on three sides by high mountains, and fed by a fast-flowing river. There is land to till, and space enough for several villages. You set about ordering the land immediately, but as your investment in the region grows, you begin to worry increasingly about jealous outsiders who would raid or conquer your budding kingdom. You build a series of outlying forts to warn of oncoming armies, and then construct a mighty citadel in an easily-defensible high spot. It has taken a lot to accomplish all this, and maybe, one day, you'll lose it all. But you'd fight like hell to prevent that from happening.
Would you fight like hell to avoid queuing up for Boarding Party for the thousandth time? I think not.
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And there you have it. I don't believe sandbox MMOs are the future -- people require a degree of structure. There will always be a large crowd of folks who like to raid, and like mindless PvP, and don't derive any enjoyment out of the non-combat elements that the genre could offer. But as a game designer, I would be looking to incorporate all crowds, and I think there's room enough in these games to please everyone.
The problem is that the investors behind these $100 million dollar goliaths are only concerned with the bottom line, and as they see it, 'if Blizzard did it, so can we.' The problem is, 'Blizzard did it' 7 years ago, and even if the genre hasn't moved on, people have. People have learned to burn through content far faster than it can be released; people have learned to race to the level cap, only to find that the bulk of the game's resources have been squandered on the shortest part of the game. It is a system that cannot endure forever -- it should only take one $100 million dollar MMO flop to call the system into question, yet in the past 5 years, we've seen game after game tank when the 'tried and true' method failed to prove lasting.
The first major company to realize this, and to design a game that lets go of so many of these dusty old habits and design a quality, hybrid product, is going to make WoW -- even at its height -- look like a complete joke.
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I gotta prop up the OP. Currently my concerns are twofold:
A) Multiple weekly maintenance nights -- why? I'm so tired of the game going offline 2-3 times a week. If there are minor bugs that need to be fixed, take the servers down for a half hour, or sixty minutes at the most -- or wait for the weekly window. If there are major bugs, why did they make it live in the first place? Do you people not have internal testing?
B) The downtimes are just infuriating for west coast players. 3 am might not be primetime on the East Coast, but midnight is definitely a prime playing hour for most west coast MMOers. The downtime window is simply stupid in this respect.
Frankly, I'm tired of this 'one size fits all' garbage. EU and NA servers should have different downtime windows, and U.S. maint should begin at 6-7 a.m. once a week. Schedule a similar window for London time.
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TL,DR: I am a huge fan of Star Wars & BioWare, and have given the game a solid chance. It needs more content. Please fix.
[Reserved for responses to thread]
I agree, OP... it just isn't much of a game at the cap.
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Bored.
I never expect there to be another game like SWG, but the era of the straight-up, zero-customization, zero-exploration, you-never-leave-the-beaten-path theme park MMO needs to come to an end as well.
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I support the OP. My ship has an airlock, right? I just really want the option to show Vette how it works.
When we aren't in a spaceport.
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This continues to remain an issue, Bioware.
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You're not very observant, are you OP? The symbol of the Republic during the period prior to the Clone Wars is the same as the Empire's symbol in TOR. How could that possibly be unless the Empire wins?
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What, were you hoping to slap her and then have her moan or something? Dude, it's a video game. Please... find a real-life woman.
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2 sabers is better then 1 right ?
Its simple math ?
Wow. Do you really believe this?
Please, the next time you are outside, try picking up two sticks and -- if nobody is looking -- waving them around like lightsabers. When you've had your fill, put one down and try using it on its own. See how much more a) control, b) power, and c) accuracy you can put into your swings with that single blade?
Dual wielding is inherently less precise than single-wielding, particularly when the 'offhand' weapon is full-size. This has as much to do with weight (which isn't such an issue with lightsabers) as it does with length (which is totally a problem) -- even people who dual wield in real life tend to favor one weapon, and use the offhand for stabbing motions. Give that person a second full-length sword, and you're actually hamstringing them; not helping.
Count Dooku would tear the **** out of any dual-wielder in this game, as would Mace Windu, Palpatine, Yoda and, probably, Anakin. Just because you've got two glowsticks instead of one doesn't somehow make you the superior fighter -- quite the contrary, in fact.
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Jaesa wasn't raised as a Jedi. She was a handmaiden and the daughter of servants in a royal house. She grew up watching the weak (commoners) serving the royalty (strong). All the warrior does (light or dark) is show Jaesa that Nomen Karr was a hypocrite. There's nothing really shattering about that.
And Anakin's fall to the dark side came from his own paranoia. The only event that could be considered shattering was the knowledge that he had killed his own wife. Which happened after he had ground out a bunch of dark side points on the Jedi younglings.
I have to agree with this. There's absolutely nothing to justify just how far Jaesa falls if you go DS, particularly if you spared her parents and former master, but still turned her. If anything, DS Jaesa should be a pragmatist -- someone who calls on the darkside to aid her, but is so jaded by the lies of either side that she remains somewhere in the middle.
It doesn't make any sense at all that, upon finding out that one Jedi is a hypocrite, she totally falls off the deepend. In fact, there is no 'Anakin moment' for little miss Willsaam -- and you telling her to kill her master doesn't count, since she's already bat**** crazy at that point (which is reaffirmed by the fact that, even if you spare Karr, Jaesa still goes off the deep end).
I don't like LS Jaesa's open rebellion against the Empire, and I detest what it does to my characters, but, ultimately, that's the more believable character model for her (especially when none of my Sith warriors have ever been nearly as crazy as she gets if she goes dark). And, honestly, I have hopes that in a future expansion, that Jaesa could be coaxed into a more realistic, neutral view of the force.
But DS Jaesa? There's no going back with that cat. She's insane.
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The fact that a bunch of Star Wars nerds sitting on a computer hate a fat man strikes me as a tad ironic.
Yes, the irony of this isn't lost on me either. I mean, c'mon guys, people are fat. Lots of people are fat. How can you be this superficial?
The MMO genre needs to stop looking backwards.
in General Discussion
Posted
You're right, that's definitely what every sandbox has to be, let alone hybrids.