Jump to content

MasterRilo

Members
  • Posts

    14
  • Joined

Reputation

10 Good
  1. I returned to this game recently with a more patient approach to it after being disappointed with the lack of features at launch. Note that I LOVE the universe this game is set in, the voice acted dialogue and dialogue options. But there are too many important things missing and I’m uncertain of whether I’ll stay as a paying customer or not. Here are the main most salient problems and changes that would be needed to keep me around, by no means all the problems but the big ones that serve as a constant annoyance. A) It takes too long to get from point A to point B, period. While leveling in certain areas it feels like I spend more time just getting from one place to the next than actually playing the game. The speed with which I move is disproportionate to the size of the worlds. This is made worse by the all the loading screens and how many areas I have to go through to get to my ship. Unlike any other MMO I play, I find myself often bored not at the game itself but at waiting so much. This is a big problem. I understand you can’t get around the loading screens, but they would be fine if you reduced waiting in other ways. Quick travel is great, but the cool down should be 15 minutes because of the sheer size of the game. It takes 5 full minutes of just running/riding if your quick travel is on CD just to get back to your quest giver in some map, that often about as long as the quest itself took. It makes the game's pace very slow. 15 minutes is more in line with how long it takes to complete a group of quests. Increase the speeder speeds. Even the flight connection points, for some reason I do not understand, take way too long. This is a sci-fi game, that paired with the very large areas I don’t understand why speeders are so slow, I would double their speed across the board and make the flight point flyers about four times faster. We also need an additional ability that returns us directly to our ship. A lot of quests involve getting back to our ship to do one thing and head back out and getting to our ship is just a pain in the *** right now. B) Utter lack of customization that matters, especially in comparison to what we’re seeing in other games. The talent trees are basically the entirety of your combat customization and there are cookie cutter builds for most purposes, very little choices and variability. This is aggravated by the fact we don’t even have double spec options. You basically copied a WoW talent tree that Blizzard scrapped because it wasn’t good without even including their dual spec feature… you don’t even have customization options similar to glyphs to offset it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying copy WoW, there are many ways to approach the problem, but it needs to be dealt with. There are almost no real options, short of just resetting your talent points and going with a different tree, to how to play your character. Plain and simple you need another layer of lateral ability customization (meaning, multiple options that change play style as opposed to simply making you more powerful), and a more dynamic talent tree, talents that just let’s say, give you 1% more crit are really boring. This is probably the biggest change needed in this game. As it stands talents are just really boring. C) Same sex relationships. If you’re going to put the option in, it’s really disrespectful that you didn’t include that option; I was very disappointed with that. D) The planets although nice looking have a “dead” and “static” feel that really takes away from immersion. You need background music most of the time, or at least the option to have it. You need weather effects that change, you need day and light cycles. You need schedule events where something happens that changes the area. The world is painfully static. I was amazed you chose to skip those things in a game thriving on immersion.
  2. Server only LFG tool... that was all I needed to see to figure I won't be back for update 1.3. You lost a lot of players from not having that feature from start, months later you implement it and you do it wrong. Your first mistake, leading up to this, was applying the triad (dps, healer, tank) to Star Wars, instead of dynamic classes, which would have fit in much better with the lore and made grouping easier and server only queues actually doable. Then you made groups 4 players, which makes the ratio of dps spots even lower than in MMO's such as WoW and Rift (that's key because most players want to dps). In WoW, which has a huge player base, players already complain (specially dps) of excessively long queues. How do you think you can pull off a server only queue with a lower dps ratio and smaller player population? That's just... shortsighted. Sure, maybe the first month when players server transfer and it's new and shiny it will be ok. But what about 3 months down the line? Yes, building a community is nice, but that happens mostly within guilds for the players that want to invest in that. For many casual players with little time to play they just want to be able to come in and play the game. They want a fast queue. Options to play with friends are very much present, you don't have to shove it down the throat of players by gimping features. Even WoW's LFR tool, which everyone claimed would kill communities, in my experience just made it easier to raid with friends. For me, who can't raid regularly, it enabled me to pick up some gear and learn the basic of fights when I came back from a break. Which in turn enabled me to then do raids with my guild they had been doing without me for weeks without being completely clueless/undergeared. Many times it has made it so that if I wanted to raid and there were only 3 friends or so online, we could still raid by just jumping in the queue together, as opposed to having to pug 7 others players (which we realistically just wouldn't have done for a number of reasons). In your game, in the first scenario, I would be relying entirely on their kindness after taking a raiding break to bring me in undergeared/not knowing the fights. In the second scenario we would have probably just not gone into an operation since gathering a full raid would have taken too long. In the absence of a raid queue, a 4 man instance runs are the main way for new players/returning players to gear up, if that doesn't work well, entering endgame becomes too difficult. Which is not good for your subs numbers. There is a reason successful MMO's have cross-server LFG tools. I want to play this game, I like the universe and narrative many, many times better than WoW. But your game as stands has a) not enough to do at end game b) is missing useful quality of life features I've grown accustomed too. So I guess I'm stuck with WoW.
  3. "My contention is that the harder the raid "level", the BETTER the gear. Bottom line, 16-man raids should drop THE best gear. PERIOD. 8-man raids should drop a tier below that and this relationship should be kept as you move forward. For example, if you had done this for the 1.2 patch, then the ilevel 146 gear would only be dropped in 16-man with the ilevel 140 gear dropped from 8-mans. BUT...when the 1.3 patch arrives, the 8-man content there would now drop ilevel 146 gear while the 16-man content drops the next ilevel of gear (152??). This provides a nice tiered system for gear to flow to the player base, AND allows each guild to determine their own level of commitment. The benefit to you as the developer is that you don't have to create huge chunks of new gear with each patch and content release. You simply add a new tier to the top and the loot tables almost populate themselves! My last raid point that I want to address is raid size. Please consider a 32-man or 40-man raid size. Smaller and more casually oriented players and guilds will flinch at this, but, in the long terms I think it's the right thing to do. For me personally, the most memorable raid experiences I recall are for the large-scale raids we did in EQ1. I honestly don't recall any of the individual triumphs in WoW...not 1. When we had 72-man raids and took on Gods, it was simply EPIC. The raid size FORCED the community to come together. Sure, we might only have 5 raiding guilds on a server, but it built the community, fostered personal interaction and had a profoundly positive effect on the entire game experience." Great post except for the above, your EQ days got the best of you there. Truth is some players, many players, like the intimacy of a small 8 player group. Penalizing them with lower tier gear because of it is not a good idea. The built in difficulty levels should influence gear, raid size should be a matter of personal taste. Massive raids... ugh. If it's a special event here and there, sure, that's fun. But definitely not as part of the main raiding content. The biggest problem with it is that for people with medium to low computers 30+ players attacking at once will slow their FP down to a crawl.
  4. I do agree with you that considering the quality of the narrative while you level, the flash points seem to fall short of bringing that same level of depth. And I also agree about responsiveness. I agree that pvp is sort of a sideshow attraction, but to me it's an enjoyable sideshow attraction, if that makes sense I think it's possible to implement great world pvp, but honestly I'm yet to see it in this MMO or any other. Like I said on my post I definitely agree that launching without solid queue and LFG tools was a mistake. But that's gone and done, I just hope they implement it soon. Definitely my main issue is the lack of dynamic response from the world environment, if my solution is too radical I do hope they come up with something to improve that.
  5. I think I was being constructive and simply sharing ideas, but you're entitled to your opinion Sadly I do not plan on developing my own MMO so I'm sorry I don't meet your standards for making this forum post.
  6. 1) So, I can't criticize the game I pay for and want to succeed unless I and abandon my current career, start my own gaming company and design my own MMO? That's priceless. 2) So the definition of humble is, hmm, short? I said humble because I recognize despite being an IT person I'm not a game developer and know my ideas may sound better in my head than they actually are. But I thought I'd share anyways since that's what forums are for It's long because there are a lot of thoughts in it, you don't have to read it if you don't want to you know.
  7. : P I don't work in the gaming industry but I am a programmer, and also have an MBA. Hopefully that will be good enough! lol
  8. This is a long post where I’ll describe what the core issues with SWTOR are in my opinion and make some radical suggestions that could make this game truly achieve it’s potential. I'll start by clarifying where I'm coming from as a gamer. I've played WOW (and continue to) for years. But I started out with final fantasy, breath of fire and the such, leading up to all of Bioware's single player RPG's: Dragon Age, Mass Effect, KOTOR. I'm a huge fan of RPG’s. I'm also a big fan of the Star Wars universe. So it goes without saying that I was very excited SWTOR. My experience with WOW was that while I enjoyed the end game raiding, the narrative was irrelevant. WOW is not an "RPG" experience for me, but rather a multi-player strategy game, where it's all about strategic development of my character and end game. I was excited about the prospect of an MMO with the sort of great writing and individual story immersion I've seen in Bioware games. But while those elements are there in SWTOR, I think Bioware failed to go outside the box in developing an MMO framework that suits it. I also think that could change. The best thing about SWTOR is that it has 8 fantastic single player stories underneath everything. The acting is fantastic, the characters appealing, the narrative drives the game. The worse thing about SWTOR is pretty much everything else. It's a great single player game, but a boring MMO is my honest opinion, mostly because the way the RPG and MMO aspects are grouped together just doesn’t mesh well. It's odd watching clones of companions everywhere who are, within your own story, portrayed as unique individuals you care about. It's odd seeing 20 people in the capital ship with the title "champion of the great hunt" when you just had this epic moment of being crowned "the one". It's odd to go through an evolving individual narrative while this shared background MMO world remains utterly static. It was very odd, to give one example that applies to many situations, when I had a quest to kill a mob as a BH because there was a bounty on it, to get to that mob and see another BH killing it, wait for it to re-spawn and THEN kill it myself, because I was immersed in my personal narrative as a BH. In a game driven by immersion, the stakes for upholding that immersion are much higher than in a game that doesn’t even try (like WOW). The MMO aspect of this game felt like it didn't add anything to my leveling experience in fact and in fact detracted from it. This includes the excessive amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B, and the fetching quests in between the story driven quests, all of which just felt like it disrupted my story’s progression. That may come out as odd from a WOW player but as I said, an immersive narrative doesn’t drive WOW, but it does drive SWTOR. When you get to the end game in SWTOR, the real problems start. Getting groups together has just been too much of a pain. You made a big mistake in listening to the rhetoric common in forums of how cross realm instance queues "destroy the community" and failed to understand most casual players view it as a requirement. You know what else destroys the community? Empty realms. Casual players, though not the loudest on forums, drive subscriptions and make up a much larger part of the player base. I'm a very experienced and skilled player but consider myself casual for two simple reasons: I have a full time job with unpredictable hours and I have a wife. Generally speaking, it's just very hard for me to have scheduled game time on a regular basis, and that’s a situation a lot of players are in. When I have some time to play a game I'm certainly not willing to spend half an hour of it spamming chat and trying to put together a pug. I need it to be convenient and quick. Add to that the many bugs in instances that seem to take too long to be fixed and very little flexibility or customization options for your game play (beyond picking your class and specialization) and you got a real end game problem. I feel that the combat system didn’t bring much new to the table, outside of the visual theme. Beyond the story there is very little innovation here, combat plays like WOW but less responsive, talents work like WOW except from 3 years ago, exploration plays like WOW except without flying mounts. The bottom line is, you took a WOW MMO framework and then applied a mass effect narrative style to it and, well, it just doesn’t work. You needed to have come up with a different MMO framework to suit your narrative style, done something very different with the genre. I think you played it too safe. So here are my humble suggestions on how to still accomplish this. Bellow, I basically outline a different conceptual framework I think would better suit SWTOR's strengths. Movement: Keep the large planets large but make getting around a lot faster. It’s important to keep tempo in a narrative, taking too long to get from one place to another is a drag, no one likes it. It should be a non-issue. Give characters the "riding" skill from level 1 and make the vehicles it about 3 times faster than they are now. Make them require some effort to “guide”, make them fun if possible. Just get rid of the CD on the recall ability, why does it even have a CD anyway? If you’ve already explored the area and connected the two spots, why exactly are you making me walk it again if my recall is on CD? No point to it. Planets: Make each planet an instance. Sounds funny but bear with me. You and your group (if you’re in one) get their own version of that planet enabling completing quests now actually makes the planet and NPC’s respond and change. That guy you already rescued in a quest is no longer on the floor bleeding, that enemy cannon you blew up actually stays blown up, the guy who said he would leave town after you complete a quest, actually leaves. The elite mob you killed stays dead. These instances, which I would call “questing instances”, would never reset automatically but could be reset manually. You could invite a friend to zone in with you and quest together (cross realm), you could also queue cross realm to be paired up with other players, however, only one of each class would be allowed in the instance to maintain immersion and uniqueness, and the instance would incorporate them in the narrative. Let’s say you zoned in with a friend who is a BH and you’re an inquisitor. Now the NPC that welcomes you both to the planet say, “Darth Johnny has asked that this Bounty Hunter work with you on this task sith. General Diddy wishes to you speak to you right away.” You get the idea. These instances would be set up, difficulty wise for 4 players. What happens if people leave? In this new framework you could have up to 3 companions out at a time, and have some tools to customize their behavior (think dragon age). Companions would also be closer to a player in power. So if one person leaves, someone brings out a companion to finish, since it’s one class per player, companions would all look unique as well. If everyone leaves or you want to solo, bring out 3 companions. If you want to start over with a new friend, reset it, and you can redo all quests together. The way it works now if your friend comes into an area and you’ve done most of the quests, you’d help him but not get any rewards since you can’t do the quest twice. This “reset” system would make it worthwhile to redo quests with a friend since you could actually redo the quests. If you just really liked your main class quest line in a planet, you can reset it and do it over even by yourself (note that your story line advances after you complete it the first time, so doing it over would just be for fun/rewards) This new companion system would make all content challenging if you want to level with friends, while still enabling you to solo it with your companion team. Right now if you’re leveling with two friends nothing will be challenging. This system would give players an incentive to stay together and finish a planet together, developing friendships. Group quests now encourage you to group up for 5 min with someone (assuming you can find someone, which is unlikely) do the group quest and that’s it. Most importantly, this approach would be far more immersive and put the MMO in narrative by truly incorporating other players in your narrative. Instances and raids: Create a wide, cross realm instance and raid queuing tool and don't allow companions to be used in them. Companions would be a questing instance tool and live in your ship, they couldn’t be used in instances, raids or follow you around in the shared area at the capital ship. Customization: Customizing the look of your gear, including moving augments and such between pieces should not cost anything. You need to rethink your talent three system, of all the things you shouldn’t have emulated WOW in; the talent tree is not one of them. Their new approach, make talents everyone has to choose baseline and make the talent tree about real choices and customizations, is really the direction to move. I’m all for you doing it your own unique way, I’d prefer it actually, but that basic concept of real choice needs to be there. PVP: Just make the queue cross realm. Lower queue times are my reply to all arguments I’ve seen people make against it. I actually think SWTOR has some of the best pvp dynamics I’ve seen in MMO’s.
  9. I play a sentinel and a mercenary and pvp a lot. While the gameplay is totally difference I find that I perform just as well with either on both pvp and pve, I have not seen this melee disadvantage some people are referring to. I have a watchman sentinel and I find that I have a lot of tools to close the gap quickly and stay on top of ranged, not to mention with the exception of cover, my melee attacks do slow down their casting. With the long casts in SWTOR it wouldn't "even the field" it would tilt the field towards melee. SWTOR pvp already has a lot of depth between the cc mechanics, the wide range of skills and the complex energy management system with the decreasing regen if you use it up too fast. It doesn't need that silly running around gimmick. I had no problem doing that dance with my ele shaman on WOW, but it wasn't fun for me, I'm pretty sure it wasn't fun for the guy doing it and it looks really stupid having this guy running through you back and forth. People only did it because it was the most effective way to pvp as melee. I'm glad to see it gone here and I really hope it doesn't get implemented.
  10. ...if you're up against a healer and a dmg dealer by yourself, assuming you are of equal skill they SHOULD easily beat you. Not sure why you're trying to argue something is unbalanced by using a 2 vs 1 scenario.
×
×
  • Create New...