[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

The 2 million+ people who quit this game, probably thought the same thing

 

Quitting, while effective, doesn't really get things "fixed". Staying on this issue, hopefully can.

The problem with this is that the many people who quit left for a plethora of reasons. Also, you can't even really "quit" anymore. I remember the first time I unsubbed from WoW they asked me why I was cancelling my account in the exit survey.

 

No such thing here...

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

You also have no idea what you're dribbling about.

Can we get some support on your end here because right now you're the vocal minority in this thread.

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

Disliking Ren & Stimpy does not make you intelligent, if that's part of your implication.

And yet, more fail on your end to comprehend. Your entire post was what I referred to as drivel because your entire post didn't do anything to add to this discussion. In fact, nothing you've said in direct response to me has been constructive.

 

Right, yet others keep posting like it's a big deal, period.

"Like it's a big deal"? You try to counter me by saying things like:

And for others, how pretty a game is is what matters most. That's the point. Not that the bug is totally irrelevant, but that it's not that big a deal to the player base as a whole.

So at one point you try to counter by saying hat importance is a matter of perspective, but then in this most current retort try and talk down to those who consider ability delay to be a big deal.

 

And, yes, if new people keep coming in and saying how it also affects them in a big way, they have a right to as they are adding to the discussion. You, on the other hand, seem to think your ritualistic hazing of new posters in this thread (like me) is intelligent and worthwhile. It's neither.

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

Right, you don't even have to be a programmer to grasp that concept. Some guys said "Well, gee, when you

, something should happen."

 

Stamp out your post? You must think I have vast, unearthly powers.

And, yet, more drivel that isn't doing anything to continue an intelligent discussion with you.

 

I think I've pointed it out clearly enough: you don't think it's that big of a deal... to you.

 

Does that sum it up? Are you done? Or did you want to continue trying to be clever?

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

This tickled my funny bone.

 

I'm not picking on you LP.. it's just that this truly did make me giggle. You unsub (which is fine) but then you tell BMM to go away.

Haha... not from the game. As long as he loves the game, it's all good. He can continue playing. In fact, I don't think anyone should unsub or hate this game just because I became unsatisfied.

 

I just don't think he brings any intelligence to this discussion. I generally agree with you when people make hyperboles to add weight to their argument. It doesn't do anything to help move things along with people can't be truthful or realistic.

 

BMM is just very annoying because he's arguing to just to argue. That's not what this thread is supposed to be about. Someone posted this, asking for Devs to respond. While I don't think they will respond... someone else (BMM) just bashing anyone who agrees with the OP is doing nothing for this thread.

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

And my post was hardly an insult. Pointing out what you said some guys said, guys who, even if they are "game developers," may know nothing about TOR, is singularly unpersuasive.

 

Maybe you do, maybe you don't. You can claim anything you want on the internet. But let's say you do. What do they know about TOR's development?

They know nothing of TOR's development. They don't all work on MMO's... but something like clicking a button and expecting it to activate an ability isn't unique to MMO's... that's inherent to all video games. Luckily, for an MMO, it usually isn't as bad because it's not like playing Super Mario Bros where the Jump button not activating can be an instant-kill, but let's not fool anyone into thinking that TOR should have some sort of pass on ability stutter. It's development is entirely a non-sequitur to a discussion about ability stutter.

 

And for others, how pretty a game is is what matters most. That's the point. Not that the bug is totally irrelevant, but that it's not that big a deal to the player base as a whole.

Now you're playing the rhetoric game of devil's advocate. While the "Why? How about why not?" can have merits, you're just being a broken-record of trying to spin things around on any new poster. You said your piece: that ability delay doesn't bother you that much.

 

I came in once to say why it bothered me, my own personal experience with a conversation I had with people in the gaming industry, and why it led to me to unsub. Then you come around huffing and puffing and trying to stamp out my post.

 

Seriously dude, go away.

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

Armchair-developer-by-proxy is not terribly compelling.

Failed attack. You're only shot is to try and be condescending and rude... go away.

 

I was responding directly to Andryah. Nowhere in the post did I insult. If you can't bring anything to this discussion, then please move on. Andryah gives great responses... you're just insulting and adding noise by barking at anyone who doesn't agree with you.

 

Sorry, but I have friends who worked at Blizzard, some at Carbine, some at Atlus, etc. But you refuting simple truths is laughable. How successful and how long would a car stay around in production if, at times, the clicker failed when you activated it... or the accelerator... or the brakes.

 

I don't care how pretty a game is, if there's a 5% chance my ability won't go off (I feel it's closer to 10%).

[Ability failing yet still applying the GCD bug Bumping daily Devs acknowledge plz]

Memorize that part, IMO.

 

We all have opinions.

 

I'm in NO WAY disregarding your opinion, by expressing mine.

 

I am in NO WAY claiming the ability delay bug does not exist.

 

I am simply stating that while it is an annoyance to me, it's minor, not game breaking or frustrating to me.

 

You know what 500K+ subscribers in an MMO does? It creates diversity in play experience, opinion, wants, and desires.

 

I'm actually doing you folks a favor by being active in the discussion and keeping the thread on page one. Where's my cookie!?

This is one of the few times I have to disagree with you. I was at a bbq with some friends who work in the gaming industry and told them how I recently cancelled my sub from this game for, first and foremost, this exact problem. When I told them about ability stutter they looked at me, wide-eyed, and one of them replied, "How can a game be like that? That's gaming mechanics 101... you don't have abilities not go off when you press a button."

 

And he's absolutely right. While I loved the class storylines (first game where I actually enjoyed making alts), the main feature that I focused on this game was end-game raiding. I'm not the bee's knees. I'm not super bad either. I'm someone who can generally do the most current progression, but I'll never be ultra-elite. So, for players like me, trying to beat enrage mechanics on fights like NiM DG and everyone in the raid is suffering from ability delay... that's noticeable drop in our dps. And when I'm already not uber-elite... this frustrates me knowing that we hit enrage by a few percent... a few percent that would not have occurred because of ability stutter.

 

The fact that it's been around since Day 1 and they don't respond in threads like these anymore seems to show that their response is, "Sorry, we can't fix it." It seems extremely obvious that they would try and fix engine failures. If they were close, I'm pretty sure they'd want to tide the masses over and say, "we're close to a fix". Sure, it's assumptions that I'm now making, but it seems pretty logical in it's path to assume that if they aren't responding to this issue, by now, then there silence is their desire to avoid answering that they cannot fix this issue.

 

I played both WoW and Rift and in neither game was I as frustrated with something as simple as clicking buttons.

 

While Ability Stutter may only be an annoyance to you, I think things such as "I click, ability goes off" are such obvious expectations that go beyond class balance, ready-check, and /random that it's unfathomable how this game continues to have this problem. That's exactly why I quit, because not even the people in my guild (who were some awesome people) were enough to keep me paying to play this broken game.

[A complete and utter joke!]

Im sure everyone wants treek instantly, but not everyone can afford to get treek instantly. Essentially there is a divide between people who purchase instantly with CC and people who spend time earning credits.

So, your problem is that you cannot obtain Treek instantly because you cannot afford it or because you seem to live CC stipend to CC stipend and never save them up?

 

Your problem is that someone else who can afford it, or who has some level of self-control and has the CC's saved up, they shouldn't be allowed to obtain Treek right away... simply because you can't?

 

Your problem is even though you have a way to obtain the companion, in-game, w/out requiring CC's, you are upset because you can't be "server first" and you'll see others roaming around with Treek before you get yours?

 

You problem is that somehow their Treek bought via the CM will somehow diminish the value of you getting your Treek? As if the value of the companion of obtaining and using Treek is somehow diminished because someone else didn't go on the X-number of hours quest?

 

Your problem is that you seem to view Treek, a companion, a purely cosmetic/fluff item in the game that doesn't grant you any sort of gameplay advantage as P2W?

 

So... the problem seems to be with you. But clearly it's BW's fault. It's all their fault that you have a problem that many of us in here are telling you is your problem.

 

You're sort of like Ferris Beuller's sister and we're Charlie Sheen, telling you the problem is with you.

 

[A complete and utter joke!]

Can I just ask..it might be a little off topic but how much money have you spent on cartel coins?

I'm going to speak up here. I've purchased 0 cartel coins and was a sub (this is my last month though). This companion gives you no advantage in gameplay mechanics. It's purely cosmetic which is exactly what the CC market was there for. Unless purchasing this companion lets you send out another companion beyond the normal 5 you can send on missions... it doesn't do anything except let you roam the world of ToR with a silly-looking bear guy.

 

If you think this is Pay 2 Win, then you're wrong.

 

There have been several people telling you to calm down. You're the only one who isn't listening because you're foaming so hard that you just want to bark at anyone who disagrees with you.

 

You want to limit other people's options in this game on how they acquire something in this game that, for all intents and purposes, is strictly fluff.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

That was EQ.

Casuals in EQ ruined the MMO community?

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

I'm still not sure what attack you think occurred. Was I somehow mean to her? I may have gone off topic but quoting someone then responding with your own opinion on what that person thinks is exactly what we all do every day.

 

When someone posts their thoughts on here and someone responds telling them that their opinion is foolish garbage, is that somehow different? More on topic to the thread perhaps, but not a call out or attack apparently.

 

I told her my opinion, she asked me questions in return and I answered them. There was no "attack". I've already told her that if she wants to discuss it in private I'm open to it.

 

Besides, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=653857 You unsubbed, not really sure why you're concerned about what happens here anymore.

 

We should return to topic now so this doesn't become any more derailed please.

Nice deflections.

 

1 - I'm not saying you're the only person who's ever attacked someone else on this forum. Just don't pretend you didn't attack her by saying she's lost credibility. That's a character attack.

 

2 - I was originally in this thread to discuss exactly the point of "Where did EA go Wrong?" and specifically mentioned that the failure on the Hero Engine is the main reason I unsubbed. I still have time to voice that matter. I'm not going into other threads spreading doom and gloom like some of the angry /quit trolls out there who have to poo-poo on everyone else who likes this game. A voice of someone who quits is valid to this thread.

 

3 - So if you don't want this thread to go off-topic, then stop the derailing by questioning other people's behaviors which has nothing to do with the OP's thread.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

I did not name you in my post so no call out was made. I simply addressed you with an opinion of my own in response to yours. If you would prefer to have this discussion through private message rather than public, I'm open to conversation but please don't think I mean you any disrespect, it was not intended.

You quote Andryah then started a direct attack to someone you referred to as "you". You're back-pedaling is futile as you're not really fooling anyone with your "no, it was an ambiguous person I was speaking to" remarks.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

The first 2 years of WoW was the best era of gaming to date.. in my opinion anyways... save for maybe the good years of EQ1 and the good ole days of MUDs. Some can claim to hate it, some can claim to have never played it, but several million people, consistently for 7+ years, all beg to differ.

 

If it wasn't for the success of WoW, you would see 1/10th as many MMOs as you see now days.... and those you did see would have 1/10th as many features.

The reason why it was the best is because WoW, back then, held the standard that raiding is something that takes dedication and time. Then casuals who refused to group, refused to put the time in, and refused to get good enough to raid would complain, "Why am I paying for this game when I can't see all the content? *cry* I should be allowed to raid at my own leisure, solo-style playing for 30 mins a day. It's not fair."

 

Unfortunately, that soon became a large portion of the player-base and MMO's have never been the same.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

WoW is the game that made MMOs main stream, before that, they were a niche genre. The only reason I played SWG at first was because it was Star Wars. The reason I play TOR are because of my friends I made in SWG and it's Star Wars...well mostly.

 

Companies do model all their MMOs after WoW because they base it off financial success, which is completely understandable. But the problem lies in that they obviously don't look at lessons learned. BW/EA obviously didn't look at what SOE could have done better with SWG. If they didn't consider the game that had the same IP as them, they are bafflingly moronic. The SW IP will have more scrutiny and publicity than anything out there. At least 4 generations should be aware of SW. I bet if you asked 90% of the people over the age of 60, they would say *** is WoW?

 

The problem is now a days is that the business part gets in the way of the development. TOR should have been released probably 6 months later, just like SWG should have been released 8-12 months later than it did. Of course Hind Sight is 20/20 but if SWG would have released closer to the release of WoW with JTL fully functional, WoW would not be king and SWG would still be here.

 

Besides WoW reminds me of the Twilight Series, it's popular and successful but it still isn't very good.

A lot of what you said is arguable.

 

I bet if you asked 90% of the people over the age of 60 if they would play an MMO of Star Wars... you would get a blank stare. I do not think SWG would have beaten WoW even if it did have a closer release date with JTL fully functional. The biggest reason is the brand. Blizzard is known for making fantastic products. They are the Pixar of the gaming industry (kind of eerie that they still are in that Pixar's movies haven't been getting all the ravings they used to get... much like Blizzard's most current products).

 

The problem is that every MMO looks at what Blizzard's WoW, and tries to emulate it in some ways but make differences in other ways. But the problem is that WoW has had years of streamlining. I see their dev posts from GC, he's truly right when he says, "We've tried that and it's not what the overall player-base wants."

 

Take ToR for example. They release their game with an engine that cannot truly support MMO level of play, they don't put in simple QoL things (like ready check, group finder, /random... things that seem like no brainers and should have been released in the first couple months), and they even admitted they weren't fully aware people would hit max level so quickly and be endgame starved so quickly.

 

The SW IP is more like the gift-wrapping on a product. When it comes down to it, it's still about how smooth the game runs and how fun it is. ToR is lacking in the "fun" department... and a lot of that has to do with QoL. That's what killed it for me. Having to click my hotkey to activate my ability 3 times before it finally triggers, but still wastes 3 GCD's is just deplorable. I can't stand it. I tried to get over it... but no more. I can't remember the last time I played a game that was so obviously broken in the simple mechanics of pressing buttons...

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

*shrug* It was fun for me and fun for hundreds of thousands of others for many years.

 

You are defending one game (TOR) that would not exist had the game you are attacking (EQ) not existed. You are criticizing the game that literally created the genre and set the blueprint for every game to follow it... without ever having played it yourself.

 

I can't describe AI in EQ when you have no context of the mobs, the environment, or the player classes. Describing how a single dungeon, and the mobs in it, worked is not possible without diagrams of the 3 dimensional terrain in that dungeon, now each mob was positioned, which other mobs it was linked to, the programmed behaviour of those mobs etc etc. There is no comparison in TOR. It's like comparing Star Wars to Phantom Menace. They are the same in one sense and entirely different in others.

I watched my friends play which is enough to know why the AI in EQ was garbage. I don't even get where you're coming from... seriously. I'm bashing EQ's lack of making a mob grind interesting. All the leveling in EQ was just a mob grind. WoW, Rift, ToR, and many games aftewards did a mission/quest type of system that covers over the mob grinding. That makes it more fun. Mob grinding in EQ was not fun.

 

Maybe it's time to take your rose-tinted glasses off and see EQ for what it is... great for it's time, but your demands were far less than they are now. If EQ came out now, as it was, how "fun" do you think it would be?

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

Umm... all you are doing in TOR for the entirety of the levelling process is mob grinding. You are killing probably just as many mobs in TOR as you would in EQ, it's just that mobs die in seconds in TOR vs minutes in EQ. TOR throws in the odd cluster of 15 minutes worth of watching a cutscene to distract you from the fact that all you are doing is grinding mobs.

 

TOR has no AI. All mobs just stand still and attack till their hps or yours reach zero. Some bosses have trick mechanics that need to be figured out, but otherwise they all act exactly the same all the time.

 

And yes... EQ's hostility to solo play was definitely one of it's greatest flaws.

But it had quests and an engrossing single-player to keep you interested in the leveling process. Mob griding in EQ required a serious mindset and dedication that does not appeal as broadly as more current games like WoW does, which is why it had a niche group. Once again, you're example of fun is flawed because WoW's questing system seems to be more fun than EQ's pure mob grind. If mob griding was more fun, don't you think more companies would have a mob grind w/out the quest hub system?

 

Once again, you're trying to tell me EQ's leveling process was fun. A slow, painful process of tediously killing the same mobs over and over and over just to see your exp bar go up one bubble in maybe an hour. And you think that's fun?

 

Plus, you said a lvl 1 snake AI was better than the AI in a lvl 42 mob here. How?

 

See, this is why I can't have intelligent conversations with you. You roam all over the place saying non-sensical things (like the lvl 1 snake analogy) and give no proof. You just say things like it's true, but you're not kidding me. The AI in EQ was far worse than anything in this game. I gave you a specific example (training mobs). You have given me 0 examples to contradict.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

A couple of things...

 

- The process you describe was possible. It was also specifically designed that way to be boring for a single player to encourage them to group up. Teaming up with even one other person made the kill/meditate cycle much shorter. EQ was a group game, The second M of MMO meant something in their design.

 

- The process you describe is someone who was intentionally picking an easy spot to farm mobs. It is someone deciding to minimize their risk.

 

- It's a pretty safe bet that the three mobs your friend was farming offered far more challenge than anything you could find in the entire TOR universe. Level 1 snakes in newbie zones were far more dangerous than the level 42 mobs I was mowing through with my Shadow last night. Yes, it is true... level 1 snakes in EQ, 15 years ago, had better AI than boss mobs do today in TOR.

 

TOR (and other modern MMO's) are full of people bashing "travel times" in games like EQ, yet those same people are often the ones who spend hours sitting in group finder or PvP queues literally doing nothing while they wait.

 

What modern MMO's have done is to remove all of the inconvenient things from old MMO's and replace them with... absolutely nothing. Things like forced grouping, travel times, downtime, death penalties etc. all served a gameplay and community purpose. Removing them from the template and not replacing them with any other mechanic to provide the intended function of those inconveniences has neutered MMO's down to painfully simple solo games that charge a monthly fee. And that is working soooooo well.

That's not the point I was arguing. I was arguing that EQ's leveling process was designed to be fun. I just countered by showing how the lack of any goal specific event and basically mob-grinding (which is what EQ had you do to level - you killed mobs in an area until you were higher level then you moved onto the next) was not fun.

 

And, no, lvl 1 snakes did have better AI's. In fact, EQ had a stupid AI system which is why you could train mobs onto someone else and why mobs would chase you through the entire zone, then go, "Oh look, squirrel!" and then target some other guy in the path. That's a dumb AI.

 

Regardless, you're not countering my point in that EQ leveling was not "fun". It was a slow, painful, mob-grind and the only way to make that fun was to interact with someone else. This game you can easily duplicate that by interacting with someone else, but at least they let the solo player have more fun than EQ did.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

SWG PRE-CU even with all of its flaws was this. There weren't raids at first and then for the longest time it was the Corellian Corvette. They you had the dungeons DWB, the Warren, and Geonosian Cave. The add the open areas Nightsister and Singing Mountain Clan, the Krayt Grave Yard, Gorax areas and then rancors and other random mobs. All of them were impossible solo unless you were a defensive stacker or Jedi and then to kill a NS Elder, Krayt, or Giant Dune Kimo you were looking at a better part of an hour. All they dropped were components to make armor and weapons better. With decay, it ment you had to keep doing it to get the enhancers.

 

Jedi...Jedi had to be unlocked then it was a tedious, paranoid grind to get to master. But if you were a master you were living good except you were permanently overt. But that was the price to have twice the ability of the average character. This was completely random to get having to unlock Holocrons first then updated to a more direct path. But complainers still thought it was too hard.

 

All of it was killed sequentially through the Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements. Where Mandalorian Armor, Jet Packs, and Jedi were common place, "how many Jedi or People" did it take to get that Jet Pack or Mandolorian Armor?

 

It wasn't gear progression but doing the harder stuff got you the possibility to have a special piece of gear that you'd only use for PvP or special occasions because of decay.

 

I should also add that there were 29 professions 30 with Jedi and 250 skill points, not 4 based on each faction and 45 skill points. It wasn't about the start or the finish it was about the journey in between.

Sure... but which game became the juggernaut of success? That or WoW. I know people hate comparing to WoW, but they are the measuring stick of success. Obviously they're doing something right where many of these other games (SWG, EQ2, ToR, Rift, TSW, etc.) are not.

 

Sure, you may not want a WoW clone, but from a company standpoint, you're going to aim for the biggest possible bucks. And trying to emulate these smaller games that were not as successful is a bad idea, don't you think? You don't want a WoW clone, but you want an SWG PRE-CU clone. Don't you think that would have made this game have even less subs since you're trying to emulate a less successful game?

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

Why is getting one-shot a no-fun mechanic? You have 10 bishops standing by that can cast raise faster than you can say heal. You just have to come to the fight committed to the fact that you will lose some gold and xp. Just like adrenals, medpacs and whatever other consumables we might have, xp penalty for dying and gold for pots are consumables.

 

I also played eve for 4 years. While that game had no hard pve to mention at the time (I hear they worked something in now), you quickly learned to not use anything you can't afford to lose. Getting one-shot wasn't a rare occurance, and losing ships often could actually hurt you financially (you didn't get your ship/equipment back on death, they exploded and got looted), but I still had tons of fun.

 

Dying, especially in a game, doesn't have to be an un-fun mechanic.

You completely missed the part where I said, "no fault of anyone." Mechanics where it just randomly determines who will die just for the sake of someone dying is a dumb mechanic. Death should be a punishment that should have some way of being avoided in the game (i.e. interrupt correctly, position correctly, don't stand in fire, get healed). But just saying to the player, "Nope, you just die, lol," is bad. You may enjoy that type of mechanic, but I truly believe you're in the minority. And why would a game developer design an encounter that would annoy the large portion of their player-base?

 

And the dying part isn't typically the part that makes it fun. It's the challenge of it. That you can't just face-roll through an event. That part is just fine. But with raids with tougher mechanics than what EQ has, punishing players for dying by hitting with with XP drops would't be very fair. Do you think guilds would be willing to hundreds of wipes testing each new boss that has extremely tough mechanics?

Well, crafting would be better. The game wouldn't be released with only 1 ops and no groupfinder. They might even have used a proper engine which supports more than 8 players without lag . Basically, the game would be more sandboxy.

So now you're just really guessing. If BW's game was ToR... what makes you possibly think the game engine was changed to the Hero Engine because of KOTOR? I'm pretty sure that wasn't the reason they used the hero engine (because they cancelled KOTOR 3). So that point and crafting are completely moot. KOTOR 3's cancellation did not hurt ToR.

I don't remember WoW being positioned as Warcraft 3 sequel, but it was a loooong time back so I could be wrong . Even if that was the case, I would argue that the coupling between KOTOR and SWTOR is much stronger because of two facts. First of all, WoW is a RPG whereas Warcraft is a RTS. Different genres. Whereas in case of SWTOR both are RPGs. And secondly, lets face it, stories aren't the primary focus of Warcraft 3. Whereas KOTOR is so highly looked upon because of the story. Hence the story continuation matters much more in SWTOR.

It doesn't matter how close the names are. One is still an SRPG, the other is an MMORPG. Focus on the RPG part all you want, but they are still different genres. So I don't care what you believe, it's really the users fault that thought this game would be just like KOTOR.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

Nope, I just know it's impossible to balance a boss in an open world. So you don't balance the boss, you balance the classes instead and let the PVP sort the rest out.

 

You can still keep instances for the PVE people, but for the major bosses, it's just sad to see how they're now being farmed every day (or week, or whatever the developer decides the raid timer is), turning "epic boss" fights that should be epic things that only happen once in a while into a daily grinding chore.

 

Lineage 2 had this right. To kill the hardest bosses, half the server had to cooperate to even begin to hope scratch them, at level. Many people died, many people lost gear, xp or gold but it was still great fun. And it was epic. It was one of the events where it really was an event, where all the players from the server would co-operate. I remember seeing valakas once, after a group tried to down it. They had ~300 people. They all died. There were corpses everywhere. :V

 

For the "easier" bosses, 40 people could do it barely, 60 people could do it with ease, but since 60 people is easily covered by one clan, you had to get an alliance, for other clans to defend you against surprise PVP from enemy clans while you tried to do it. Or, get an alliance to wipe out everyone else, then steamroll the boss with 200 people before they enemy can come back from respawn. In either case, the battles were glorious.

 

In short, I don't have anything against instances, but so-called "end-game" bosses should require more than 10-20 people working together, and the gear they should drop, while mildly better than other gear, should be mostly there for bragging. It's one thing to have the gear every 2nd dude on the server has, because they diligently ground daily hard/nightmare modes and/or raids. It's completely different to have a sword/armor/whatever that you can only get after you herd and lead 500 people to victory over a gigantic dragon that can kill 20 people with a single tail swing and kill it after 2 hours of battle.

This sounds like how the 4 biggest guilds on Rallos Zek got together to kill the Sleeper. I miss 40-man raids in wow, but it's ridiculously hard to coordinate guilds of that size. WoW saw this... as did virtually every other MMO which is why requirements for # of people dropped.

 

But, c'mon... 500 people trying to kill a boss. Really how intricate are the mechanics on fights of that nature? If 20 people are guaranteed to randomly die every time the dragon shakes his tail then that's not a fun mechanic. That's just a dumb one where you're one-shot through no fault of anyone. Most giant boss fights are just about spam healing the tank, staying away from the cleave front and cleave tail, and pew-pewing. Massing #'s to 500 shouldn't be the great challenge either.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

This is the problem with modern MMOs and the death of fun in MMOs. It's a bloody MMO, why do we have to be locked out from everyone else. 99% of the fun in fighting bosses in either pve or pvp games was dealing with the players who were also after the boss. In PVE servers you had to use clever positioning and boss skills to defeat your competitor (dynamic content, since the players are doing the killing, even though it's by proxy). If it's a PVP game, you come in early (boss spawn timers are known), kill, or otherwise disable all competing guilds, then kill the boss, while also defending against competing guilds that are starting to run back from spawn. Again, dynamic content.

 

Now it's 2013, and all we get is a "raid group" that beats on the exact same encounter hundreds of times to get some loot. Because, apparently, competition is griefing. Not to mention how dumb this whole "pvp server" thing is in a 2 faction game with zero penalty for killing players for no reason. All it does is encourage camping questing lowbies with 55s on tatooine.

Lol... sorry, but you try and make PvE encounters as tough as possible w/out factoring in the "here comes that griefer". Sorry, I saw my friends raiding in EQ and too many times they could be interrupted by a single Bard or Ranger. Sure, it's dynamic, but you cannot properly tune a boss when you cannot factor in "dynamic griefing". If you try to consider it, then the boss would be stupidly easy if there is not griefing involved.

 

You seem to lack the ability to see the forest through the trees (aka the big picture). The reason instances came along is because Blizzard saw the inherent failure in designing raids in mostly open-world content as see by single rangers/bards destroying entire raids in EQ.

 

I agree that PvP servers aren't true PvP servers like Rallos Zek was in EQ... where you could literally kill anyone. And I would be all for a proper game of PvP... but in 2-faction games population balance is going to affect it. In Rift they had dynamic world boss events... which always, always, always were easy boss kills that just took time. Heal the tank, kill the boss... and the higher pop side would just dominate the smaller side. But if the other faction didn't fight, the boss was so pathetically easy that... really, what's the point of the boss if he isn't challenging. If the pvp part makes it a challenge, then just remove the boss entirely and make it a strictly pvp event.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

You totally miss the point.

 

The process of levelling was the point of EQ and similar MMO's. Getting to max level was not. That's why they made exploring, travelling, and monster killing fun. That's why endgame was nothing but gravy.

Sorry, gotta disagree with you there. I saw my friend, who played a mage, having "fun" by "killing monsters". He would take 30 minutes to travel to an island. He would use all of his mana to kill 3 mobs that appeared in 3 different spots. Then he would med for 10 minutes.

 

He did this for 8+ hours each day on the weekends. Sorry, but I don't find that "fun".

 

I much prefer the SWTOR approach.

 

The Rift approach was a nice innovation.... but its overly complicated and they have made it even more tedious over time.

 

If Rift had SWTOR level lore and IP.. I would overlook the Rift skill tree tedium. As it stands.. Rift lore is contrived and boring... which makes the skill tree feel more tedious then it probably really is.

I agree with this. The Rift skills trees weren't done very well as most people play hybrids all the time because the final talents in the trees were almost always a waste (I think they have started figuring that out).

 

And I also agree... the lore in Rift was terrible. I didn't know what I was doing half the time, story-wise... I would just scroll down and click "Accept" on quests.

this. I played EQ for..god I dunno how long..10 years? and closest I got to max level was 56 when the cap was 60..yet I was CONSTANTLY entertained...had things to do..and had people to help.

 

you know..back when classes actually MATTERED...and death meant something. Some of the best times I had (if not frustrating as well) was taking my Cleric deep into a dungeon to help drag out friends and being good enough to save myself with heals, cc's, and shields to get out of the dungeon alive..then go back in to clicky res them..

 

I miss my water sprinkler of nem-ankh

 

TOR has nothing of the sort......all there is is questing...then you hit the end of your class quests...and it's raid...or...nothing really unless you also like to pvp. No rare mobs to go after. no hard dungeons. nothing.

10 years and never got max level. Don't know what to say. Both of my friends got to max level... hmmm... want to say in less than a year (I could be wrong but I know it was less than 2 years for sure) and spent most of their time at that point doing raids on the Planes and they were also part of the Rallos Zek Sleeper Kill

You're missing the point. The point is that BW tried to shoehorn a single player game into an MMO. If they had made an MMO from the ground up in the KOTOR or Star Wars universe, while going ahead with KOTOR 3 separately, both the MMO and the SRPG would be in a better position.

How would this game be better? They would still be using the terribly flawed Hero Engine. They'd still have faceroll Raids early on that were only hard because of bugs. And they'd still be in Prelim Rated Warzones.

 

You really think if they didn't pull the KOTOR team over to help get ToR done we would be better off? Not sure how you can see that. Before they pulled the team off of KOTOR they already had a focus on story-driven content so not sure where you're basing your conclusions from.

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

Actually, a far greater analogy would be buying World of Warcraft and expecting Warcraft IV.

six of one, half a dozen of the other

[Where did EA go Wrong?]

We know the difference between a Single-player RPG and an MMORPG. But there were no options. KOTOR 3 was cancelled. So if you wanted to see the story of KOTOR, you had to buy this game. And Bioware positioned the game as a follow-up to KOTOR 2. Look up their "KOTOR 3 to 10" quote. It was not a "same universe unrelated games" like Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2. It is a direct sequel, more like Witcher 1 and 2.

 

And you have to accept that Bioware tries to cater to the KOTOR fans in a significant way. Thats why Revan appears in the game, thats why you can get HK as a companion.

 

In fact I feel that a huge portion of the initial subscriber loss was due to KOTOR fans finishing the game and moving on. In my view if BW had made this MMO in the KOTOR universe but not as a direct sequel to KOTOR 2 and allowed Obsidian to make KOTOR 3 this game would have been much more successful. It would have attracted the right type of players, MMO players who are interested in MMOs and not the SRPG players who just want to see the single player story and move on. The SRPG players are unsuited for MMO grind and repetitiveness. But BW tried to attract SRPG players and get them to subscribe to an MMO, which is something they have no interest in, and this game went downhill from there.

No, this game would still be in the same state it's in. Everyone who wasn't the KOTOR fans, above, would still have gotten the game and either played or cancelled all the same. So even if you KOTOR fans had not gotten the game, it should still be around the same #'s because any KOTOR fan who was "duped" into getting this MMO should have been long gone by now, shouldn't they? If not, I'm wondering why you're playing a completely unsatisfying genre. Why? Just because it's in the same universe? That, once again, is on you.