RabidPopcorn
-
Posts
399 -
Joined
Content Type
Forums
Blogs
Events
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Posts posted by RabidPopcorn
-
-
Pvp servers tended to have players interested in mostly pvp...all the time...at the expense of actually doing world events or flashpoints. Its also much harder to complete quests when those level 50s decide to group up and go hunting and some quests are better skipped than run side-by-side of the other faction.
Hmm... 'Jung Ma' is also a pvp server, albeit with a RP prefix.
-
I just have to say this: Diablo 3 isn't an MMO; WoW is.
-
Pvp servers = meh. I thought pvp server would mean open world. Instead, it meant a less-mature community. Wish I could transfer my 50s out. Instead, I'll probably just delete and restart.
But is it that bad that you would choose a lower populated server over a higher populated one? As it stands 'Jung Ma' is at 'Heavy' and 'The Bastion' is at 'Very Heavy'.
-
What are everyone's thoughts? I can't decide between these 2 to transfer my characters.
I'm not really interested in RP (but I did choose an RP server for a better community).
I like being able to group up fast.
-
The new quest was fun, the idea that this set of missions made the galaxy seem "alive" and changeable instead of the same place no matter what my character did was nice. Two things would have made this event better:
1. As the quests become available, they are available for everyone on the day they are released. Yes, I realize you are trying to get people to log in every day and see another part of a story. The fact is, many casual players can only play for a few hours in the week. Throw them a bone. Trying to find the time to log in every single day to run around and look for the quest I had not seen before was too time consuming.
2. Each server should have had a "step counter" with each new mission being introduced as the counter stepped up. For example, day 1 is the start missions. When 10,000 infected Security Officers (and 24 hours have passed, whichever is greater) then the next mission is introduced. The next counter is for the server to harvest 100,000 Rakghoul DNA (or the 24 hours, the time is needed to stop the larger servers from racing through the content due to manpower), the next counter is 15,000 Rakghoul vaccines. By the end, there should be 6 counters, one for each quest, and the population feels like they are participating.
Well, in afterthought, my idea is a generation old, I know you are trying to get away from the "collect 10 rat tail" model of game play, and use story. Hmm. What if you used "5,000 separate characters must defeat the Rakghoul Captain" so you maximize the number of players doing the mission. Then choose to do the other counter as a server wide "bonus quest" which, if completed, allows access to a special merchant or pet or something for everyone that helped.
The point I am trying to make is that stories are great, but active stories where the players get to make the outcome happen (or better yet, have two outcomes, and each server can choose to follow a dark or light side outcome!) are better than passive stories where the players just watch a movie after they kill 10 rats.
I like the 2nd idea because it means that players who missed out on the first few days would not be precluded from getting the full armour set. Notwithstanding that, I agree with the part about how it makes the whole server feel like they're part of a big event - it brings it close to the server-wide events in WoW which I felt were a good way to generate some sense of community.
About the armour set: It would have been nice if it had options in medium and heavy too; or some special universal category for social armour which would make it combat-effective for all classes.
-
This is really pointed at the daily comendations. Could we please get a quest line for the Rakata Implants that involve some basic quest a heroic or two and maybe wrap it up with a flash point? Please dont continue with these terrible, uninspired, grinding time sinks BioWare. This applies to relics as well. They are not fun to me. I want the feeling of acheivment and progress.
I totally agree; daily grinds are like work/chores to me and it isn't fun.
THE MAIN PROBLEM: NO GEAR SHOULD BE EXCLUSIVE TO DAILIES; THERE SHOULD BE ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF GETTING THEM.
Whatever happened to original, engaging, fun, deep and long epic quest chains? Imagine the potential in SWTOR for such an endeavour since story is the main focus.
Even the SWTOR fanboi's hated game - WoW - does this better. Especially during the vanilla age, you had the drakefire amulet, quel'serrar, class epic mounts, the tirion fordring quest into scarlet strath and many more which I can't recall - all of these quests gave something unique; in fact, lots of weapons/armor in WoW are derived from quest-chains. There hasn't been any single mission in SWTOR that goes to such extents; and this is a game which markets itself as a story-driven MMO. The class story is perhaps the only one that compares.
-
Will we be getting any server-wide events, at least to the scale of the opening of the gates of Ahn'Qiraj in WoW? That would be rather epic.
-
I don't know any tech but I do know SWTOR uses loading screens way too often for my liking when travelling from 1 place to another.
I find that having to go through loading screens so often - especially if they take quite some time to load - takes away from that fundamental aspect of an MMO - a seamless, persistent world. It's really undermines that MMO atmosphere where the player feels like he's part of one single unified universe.
Perhaps, if technology (and costs) allow it, SWTOR could be better if they just allowed de-instanced inter-planetary travel - this means no load screens from the point where you enter your ship till you disembark.
In fact, it would be best if they would allow us to use our ships to travel freely throughout space; we should get greater control over our ships - even more than what we can do in space missions - to the point where we can literally manually pilot it from any point in space to another.
-
What bugs me isn't that players don't buff others per se; what bugs is that quite a number of players don't buff during combat situations, e.g. Warzones, Flashpoints, Heroics.
-
Hero +2 just slows you down. They are filler content for people who want to do something with a group feel. Like every other MMO you have played the game starts at 50 once the majority of the server population hits cap.
Surely a player can expect that a young MMO like SWTOR would be well-populated all round. Even WoW was fairly well populated at all zones more than a year - perhaps even 2 years - into the game (I played on a light-standard load server). One of the reasons I got tired with WoW is the whole leveling process has got so lonely; there are lots of times where you're the only person in the zone - it really takes away from the whole MMO feel.
It isn't necessarily about needing to group up with someone all the time; the occasional player that walks by and decides to helps you, even the occasional world pvp moment or even having some entertaining chat on general... things like these add up to create an MMO experience.
This isn't to say that SWTOR sucks or anything - if a player was gonna go solo 1-50 SWTOR is probably that much more fun than other games. It's more of the fact that the amount of players online in a server can affect the MMO experience - I'd take a Full server even if it had a waiting time (<5mins preferably) over a Light/Standard one any time.
-
Short Answer = BW caved.
Ultra Long Answer = The problem is that BW tried to mesh the KOTOR-3 crowd and the MMO crowd.
The thing is that, barring myself and a few select others, KOTOR-3 people, by definition, play alone, go through the planets, roll an alt or 7, and never come to the boards. I never went to the Neverwinter Nights boards, or the Baldur’s Gate boards, etc… I might have hit a spoiler site or 3, but I wouldn’t come to a board, for a single player game.
The MMO people, being MMO… are very social, and very intense about what they want in an MMO. PVP people, being PVP, are an exceptionally aggressive bunch (no duh… they FIGHT for fun…) so the subset of MMO people that PVP will exceptionally aggressively make their presence known on the boards, in summits, in e-mail feedbacks, etc…
So, boards (barring loud obnoxious French dudes like me) will have an over-representation of MMO. Problem is, only BW knows if the KOTOR crowd is 1% of the population, 5%, 25% (my guess), or 50% of TOR’s subscriber base.
Sadly (for me), I’ve seen this happen before… in City of Heroes. The game started with a heavy solo and small group focus. Then, over the years, they’ve progressively added more and more emphasis on raids. When I left, an entire section of the story (I could NOT care less about gear, I can’t emphasize this enough) is gated… if I understand the term right… behind Incarnate Content i.e. raids.
Wasn’t enough that there’s dozens, possibly hundreds of MMO out there, the raid/PVP crowd HAD to come into CoH and turn it into raid raid raid just like… every other MMO. I couldn’t keep 1 MMO “my” way, especially considering it was solo centric for YEARS.
Now, the same is happening to TOR, just sooner. More FP. More OPs. And, the worse thing is, according to the MMO people, BW is doing the MMO part wrong.
-So, TOR is marketed as a Story Driven (fourth pillar) MMO i.e. a hybrid game.
-The fact that BW said “Story Driven” as a focus is ignored by the MMO players that hate the spacebar-VO-waste-of-money…
-The MMO people then complain about the lack of MMO features, which, in all fairness… is pretty lacking (I look over my wife’s shoulder when she raids in EQ, COH, and many others)
-Devs listen to the MMO people, and updates are now about FP and OP (well, and Legacy that, even as a KOTOR-3 fan… I’m VERY disappointed with)
PREDICTION (out of the air, of course)
-Story people, as they finish the story, and very little new story (due to raid / pvp focus), will calmly leave. Calmly because, well, many don’t read the boards. They’ll be happy, but “done”.
-This will increase even more the MMO part of this hybrid game.
-Wanting to listen to the ever growing majority of MMO people, devs add more Raids / Group / PVP content with little VO since people hate / spacebar it anyways. Waste of money for MMO people...
Option A = BW will continue to upset the MMO people by making sub-par MMO content, and they’ll leave. KOTOR-3, Single player, story people will lose, because, well, BW will be focusing (badly) on the MMO part.
Option B = BW will finally learn, fix it’s mistakes, and the MMO people will be happy. KOTOR-3, Single player, story people will lose, because, well, BW will be focusing (properly) on the MMO part.
Either way, KOTOR-3, Single player, story people will lose because BW didn’t make KOTOR-3, but misled the KOTOR-3 playerbase that this would be KOTOR-3 through 10, with a story focus.
Heck, you can’t read 2 threads (related to the topic or not) without people commenting on how the VO sucks, spacebar sees a lot of attention, money wasted in VO… and those are the people the devs are listening to.
The only question now is, will BW salvage the MMO part of this game? Maybe. Maybe not.
But, from the direction of the game (1.1, 1.2), the critics of the game, the players here on the board, I would be surprised if BW didn’t ignore the fourth pillar, VO, etc… DESPITE MARKETING FOR IT… and this will become, at best, like every other online game… raids and PVP… at worst… a failed game.
But it certainly won’t be KOTOR-3 through 10 as far as any future updates. If there's a new "chapter" it'll be one arc, on one planet, at best, but I doubt we'll even have that.
I’m still here because I have alts left to see, but I’d be stunned beyond words if after I’m done classes x8 there would be more chapters. Story, if any, will be put in content with groups and raids. Mechanics wise, makes sense to put resources in repetitive content (dailies, raids, PVP events done multiple times) rather than a quest you do once and never again… doesn’t mean it helps me much.
Would I have preferred BW stuck to its guns and kept Story Driven Fourth Pillar as it’s focus? Absolutely.
Should I have known that the “MMO trumps all” mantra would have over-ridden this hybrid game? Yes. Totally my fault.
If a future game takes my favourite IP (Highlander), and makes it into an MMO, and the devs write the promise in blood, driving to my house personally to say it will be story driven, solo based, and will be KEPT that way… will I believe them and try yet another MMO… ever again…
Absolutely not.
I’d love to be wrong… but, in short, the fourth pillar we have… is all we’re getting. Any future story will be in raids and groups. I’d be shocked if it was otherwise here in TOR…
All of which could have been avoided if BW... had done KOTOR-3 instead of TOR... but hey...I've learned. If the next IP / game system I like is even TOUCHED by the words MMO, I'll know "MMO trumps all" and I'll stay far... far... away...
The problem with a solo-centric, story-driven game that ALSO wants to be an MMO is sustainability: can BioWare keep up with the pace of players clearing the story side of SWTOR? Although it's true that quite a number of people like replaying content (e.g. I know there are some of you out there that enjoy replaying single-player games, not once, not twice, but ... many many times) I personally can't bring myself to do it.
This again brings me back to a major point I brought up in the Blizzard/WoW gets it thread: anyone notice the major difference between BioWare and Blizzard? I don't think I've played any BioWare game, maybe Baldur's Gate, but let's think about that and the famous ones like Mass Effect and compare them to Blizzard games (mainly 3 I know of: Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft): the main difference I see is that Blizzard has a heavy focus on multi-player (Battle.net), notwithstanding the fact that all it games also come with a story/campaign mode, in the end the proportion of time spent on multi-player far exceeds the single-player time spent.
The point is that for some players (like me), playing with other players is less boring than story-mode.. This is not to say I hate story-mode, in fact I always complete it first; and I always find the story-mode experience (in any game) to be really enjoyable and more intense - while it lasts, that is, once I finish the main-arc, that's the end for me.
Yet, does having a strong multi-player focus necessarily mean we can't have awesome and sustainable story-mode? SWTOR is probably the closest I've got. Although I can't wait for a game that will do it better - imagine the outcome: cinematic like graphics and lots of cutscenes but in an MMO; like watching a movie but also playing it.
-
I hate dailies; I would so much more prefer a greater variety of engaging, deep and extremely long mission chains.
Dailies feel like work/chores, it's like the routine for many players is to log on, do dailies, log off.
My biggest gripe with dailies however, is that in order to get certain 'end-game' gear (such as earpieces, implants... and now black hole stuff) players have no alternative but to do dailies.
Also, I hope we get some epic server event comparable to the scale of the gates of AQ or even grander in scale!
-
MMOs have gear, if you really really really feel short-changed because of it, you may want to play an FPS.
-
The premise behind resilience/expertise: that pvp'ers and pve'ers should have to grind twice. that pvp'ers and pve'ers should not be able to cross-participate.
personally, i hate resilience/expertise. When vanilla WoW introduced pvp gear, there was no such thing as resilience, the only difference was more focus on crits and pvp talent bonuses - it worked fine for me, everyone could cross-participate and the gear gulf wasn't great.
-
The passage that will help republic players get to the area between the 2 Imperial outposts can only be accessed from the Dune Sea at -705, 484. It's really easy to miss. You head to the sand people area along the eastern wall of the Dune Sea; it's a prominent location if you open your map, you will see something jutting out from the eastern wall - that is the area. When you do reach there, the tunnel is under the huge arch-like rock formation, to the east.
Anyway, thanks for the help guys. (I'm using this for 'tracking the origin' rakghoul event mission).
-
One of the Final Fantasy games had a programmable interface for companion characters, so they would execute functions you pre-programmed them to do. Moreover, you could make such actions conditional, based on health percentage of other characters, strengths of enemies, etc. Would be killer to see something like that adopted for TOR.
That would be nice, but I read somewhere that the devs don't like stuff like that because they don't want macros.
Coupled with an ability queue like in KotOR, that wouldn't be a bad idea.However, I'm fine with it as it is now. Coming from a WoW background I was concerned at first, but the lack of autoattack has really grown on me.
Sounds nice huh =p. Anyway, my main motivation for having such an option was to allow players to kill targets just by engaging them with right-click - it would save lots of time when farming or when you're not needed to max dps.
All such an option would do is to mimic how a player would right-click (or hit the key on the keyboard) repeatedly.
It could be in the form of an ability or just an option in the interface, whatever, as long as it does what it's supposed to do; although I imagine it would be more convenient as an ability than an interface option.
-
What can I do with battlemaster commendations in 1.2? Will they be deprecated like the centurion and champion commendations? Should I be spending them now, before 1.2 or should I save them to spend for when 1.2 hits?
-
Which reminds me: why can't I use my ship's blasters to take out that enemy target instead of having to increase my risk of getting killed by fighting through an army with just me and my companion on foot?
I wonder if our ships can defeat Soa 1v1.
-
this is exactly like most games with an auto attack as well.
maybe, but I don't believe it was like that in WoW - for the non-casters at least - where say, a warrior, could auto-attack AND use mortal strike at the same time.
Not sure if they fixed it yet, but in SWTOR they even have issues with the jedi knight's riposte not being executed properly.
-
So the game's been out for a few months now- and long before we were told again and again how great it was that the game wouldn't have auto attack- every time you attack, you're hitting a button.
So has it been good for you? Do you enjoy having that extra button you have to press every few seconds for an auto attack rather than having it built in?
It's the way SWTOR's mechanics work - every ability you use triggers the global cool-down unless otherwise stated. In that sense, auto-attack doesn't exist in SWTOR.
However, I'd be more than happy if they included a function that, on activation, would automatically cast the default 'auto-attack' repeatedly upon engaging a target without having me to click it.
-
I am concerned about the unlocks on our 50s and what happens if we delete the characters themselves? For example: If I have 8 characters and only one of them is a lv 50 Chiss BH. I want to make a Chiss SI. If I delete the Chiss BH will I also be deleting the unlock that allows me to make a Chiss SI?
Hmm... does it require that we have a lv50 Chiss currently or that we had achieved a lv50 Chiss before?
-
I am assuming that they are still going to be following some of the same design choices.
And to be honest, with *limited* potential for future MT stuff in the shop (especially if they keep it along the same lines as what was already in the GW store ie cosmetic/no ingame advantage) then the same design rules would apply.
Basically, as long as they keep their operating costs down to a minimum (still no word if there would be official forums... GW itself has none), similar to how they did GW, then they would be relying on the box price to keep themselves afloat.
If i could ever get a sit down talk with one of their community peeps i might be able to squeeze out more, but keeping the number of forum staff down *DOES* help quite a bit on monthly costs.
I do also believe that *currently* their support staff is actually non existant, and instead NCsoft supply it instead (which is pretty standard for NCsoft published titles to a greater or lesser degree... you will have some specialist GM's for a title, but you will also find some that cover all games).
*edit* you are correct in that players *generally* speaking don't mind how much of a profit gets made, the amount of profit that *does* get made can make a difference later on, especially if maintenance costs go up for whatever reason (ie needing more support staff on hand for a big hit).
To be honest, i would expect GW2 to sell really well, as in stunningly well. BUT I can guarantee that we would see a population drop of "regular logins" after the 1st 30 days, if not the 1st fortnight, and for it to continue to steadily drop in the long term.
This is based on my previous experience with MMO's (I can only name a couple that have bucked this trend in the long term... World of Warcraft and Eve Online).
On microtransactions: I'm happy to allow microtransactions as long as they don't involve any in-game advantage (such as in combat), and in exchange not have to pay a monthly subscription. Even WoW has such things in the form of mounts and non-combat pets from the Blizzard Store.
On customer service: Yea it would suck when you need customer service only to realise that it's non-existent (like bugs in raids etc.); but it really depends on how much a player would want to pay for customer service. With a monthly subscription everyone contributes to the customer service fee but it doesn't necessarily mean that all of us ever uses it.
[before I go on to talk about profits, my understanding is that it is implied in the term 'profits' that expenses have been accounted for - i.e. expenses include salaries, server maintenance, and even R&D costs (can also be capitalised but that's another story). It's probable that most of these costs (expenses) are variable after the initial fixed costs threshold - that they have a minimum cost and then increase with the number of subscribers, e.g. server maintenance - but not all of them necessarily would be, such as R&D. Anyway the point is, if we really believe that the bulk of our subscription costs are paying for these expenses then intuitively we would compare the number of subscribers and the profit at each period; if our belief has any truth in it then we would expect expenses to increase linearly with the number of subscribers (yes it could even be decreasing due to savings from economies of scale, but that's one assumption I'll take); but if we discovered that after a certain point expenses no longer increase much but profits increase by a lot then it would imply that they don't really reinvest all the additional subscription money they get into the game - i.e. they'll only spend up to $x per period on the game, any amount above $x goes out of the game. Anyway this is just my rudimentary understanding of it and it depends on many assumptions but it helps support my model on this]
On profits: The premise in your statement is that when companies make profits they would reinvest it in the game for further development, so more profits would tend to generate more development; but whether that is really the case has been part of the discussion in this thread. After all, this isn't a non-profit game so it is expected - and their right - to siphon off profits to satisfy shareholders or fulfil other strategic goals. In any case, the minimum we deserve from a game is sufficient maintenance and bug-fixing for the game to be playable - this is regardless of whether we pay a subscription or not.
In short, if we can have a game that's objectively as good as SWTOR just that we'd have to sacrifice customer service (and allow cosmetic-improvements from microtransactions) but in return we won't have to pay a monthly subscription fee, I'd support it.
-
Designing the game so that *AT LAUNCH* it will be "profitable" just on box sales alone <--- this one is probably the most influential decision, as it affected practically all of their follow on decisions as well.
It also has a MT shop as well (NON EXCLUSIVE - skill unlocks, extra storage, facial/sex/name changes)
It was also designed to be as low data traffic usage as possible (which explains why you can still play it on a dial up connection if you choose to), this help keep bandwidth/server costs to a minimum.
The huge amounts of instancing as well probably helps a lot as well with their server requirements.
HOWEVER: All expansions for GW you had to pay for (and they were typically £40 each at launch). You didnt need the original (Eye of the North excluded) as they were also "stand alone" titles... so that helped rake in the cash from the player base.
I will have to look back into their financials (well NCsoft's at least to see how they are doing "financially", but from what i can remember, Guild Wars actually brought in LESS money than City of Heroes over the 2011 year)
From what i can gather, their design choices were made so that they could "run for free" as long as people kept on buying the game.
Side note: From what i remember in a interview with an NCsoft bod a few years ago, the Blizzard guys who formed Arena.net were working on WoW, and actually wanted to make WoW F2P (or B2P at least)... Blizzard said no, and so this was their 2 finger salute to them...
Yay, someone who replied, thanks.
Btw, I was asking about GW2, not GW1 (I've played some GW1, yet to try GW2); anyway, the reason why I'm asking about GW2 is because GW2 seems like it's actually going to be like a real MMO in that it will be a massive, persistent-world experience, i.e. it won't be instanced to death like GW1.
Players have to pay for Guild Wars expansions, at the same time players also have to pay for WoW expansions; but players don't have to pay a subscription fee for Guild Wars.
And it really wouldn't matter for the players whether the company made a huge or tiny profit, at least to the extent that the game is still being maintained and continually updated.
-
I've only read the thread title, but here's what I have to say:
Whether you like it or not, SWTOR is the closest thing to WoW in the market now in terms of the 'quality' and style of the game; the most substantive difference is that SWTOR is based off Star Wars. I.e. I feel that SWTOR tried to draw WoW players who were Star Wars fans.
So SWTOR is effectively the only Star Wars based MMO in the market right now, and it will probably be that way for a good number of years; and I doubt they'd have more than 1 SW-based MMO out there, so if a new SW-based MMO comes out it'll probably be at the expense of SWTOR - but this is just a guess. I.e. Many SWTOR players are probably ex-SWG players or just playing this game because it's Star Wars.
Essentially, I feel that the player-base that will be loyal to SWTOR over time would largely be the 1) Star Wars fans and 2) BioWare fans (yes, many players are both).
SWTOR doesn't have that great of a lock-in power - not least because it doesn't take much time to get to 50 - so switching from SWTOR to the next MMO that the non-SW-fan-player finds more interesting wouldn't be that difficult a decision.
Personally, if not for WoW becoming boring SWTOR wouldn't really be that attractive for me. I do enjoy SWTOR but not being that avid a Star Wars fan I haven't really felt an emotional connection with SWTOR. More importantly though, MMOs have left me really jaded; I'm still waiting for something more inspired.
Jung Ma v The Bastion
in General Discussion
Posted
Anyway I've decided on 'Jung Ma' but only because my name was taken on 'The Bastion'. Lol.
Thanks everyone.