Why do people consider TOR a single player experience? I don't understand.

[IkritTOR]

Because the game is so instanced you can get to 50 without ever see'ing anyone or barely(outside of city) it feel like a coop RPG more than a mmo

 

Uh, what?

 

I always see people while questing. At 3:00 am server time, on a weeknight, on a mid-level planet like Tatooine or Alderaan. I'm not sure how the high-level planets are, but I'm not having a problem seeing people or talking to others in general chat. Naturally, that assumes I WANT to talk to people in general chat (the Force is not strong with that channel, but the stupidity is...).

 

I have been leveling an another character with a friend and it is so much better. So, yeah, a coop rpg for sure, but we often have other people fighting on the same quests as us.

 

As for hundreds of instances, I only ever get like 2 or 3 instances per planet, even on the homeworld. Maybe it's because of a low server cap, so there are actually less people to see rather than just our imaginations. And my slow computer thanks Bioware for that...

Edited January 7, 2012 by IkritTOR

[rzrknight]

Thats true of just about any mmo, including wow and rift. In fact this game has way more quests that require grouping than WoW does.

 

True but when i lvled in WoW i remember taking much longer due to being a healer and well ... it was not always an easy life.

[WickedDjinn]

Actually, since Cata they give you more experience and it's a lot easier to level. Let's not forget, WoW is at level 85 cap and want new players to experience end game content with the rest of us. Why make them go through hell for 85 levels. That was a smart idea. Before cata, leveling wasn't quite as quick as you see now.

 

BTW, most people choose to warzone to 50 because questing is annoying. There are mobs everywhere you go, LITERALLY. You can't mount on the road and ride for scenery and get to a safe location without having to fight silver heads that take forever to kill even though they are weak. Everyone tries to avoid the hassle of that crap.

 

Nah it was like that before Cata. Blizzard has been moving towards making the game more solo friendly for years.

 

Not because they have all those levels to get passed, but because they don't believe that a player should ever need to group if they don't want to.

[Nitsud_Deus]

Because the lame kotor girlies cried about an MMORPG and they bioware was ruining kotor. So now it runs like a normal RPG. The game is boring.

 

Honestly I think its a little light on the rpg...its obviously light on the mmo. I think they walked the line and didn't quite make it heavily one or the other.

 

I'd rather have the rpg though. To me this feels more like an interactive story I have to share with all the idiots running around me than an rpg.

[Ankido]

@Enistre

 

let me give you a good example. I'm level 36 and I chose to do standard and class quests with a few heroics here and there when general chat asks for grouping. Because of the slow leveling, I find myself killing things more than turning in quests. I was in Taris for 3 days because that place had more quests than a white chick with herpes. Bottom line is, Warzone gives more experience because you are constantly queuing up and getting experience as with questing, you are either avoiding mobs because the planets are over populated with them including on the roads or fighting through to get to point B from A.

[Mogitu]

Actually, since Cata they give you more experience and it's a lot easier to level. Let's not forget, WoW is at level 85 cap and want new players to experience end game content with the rest of us. Why make them go through hell for 85 levels. That was a smart idea. Before cata, leveling wasn't quite as quick as you see now.

 

BTW, most people choose to warzone to 50 because questing is annoying. There are mobs everywhere you go, LITERALLY. You can't mount on the road and ride for scenery and get to a safe location without having to fight silver heads that take forever to kill even though they are weak. Everyone tries to avoid the hassle of that crap.

 

agree, but im not talking about the pace of leveling.

in vanilla wow i reached level 60 without needing to group at all.

 

for your second statement i cant fully comment, because i am only lvl 30 so far but i havent experienced those problems. but maybe i feel that differently, which ofcourse is nothing more then a personal feeling(opinion).

[HelluvaJedi]

With companions, ease of leveling and the gear that's handed out from quests, there isn't even a motivation to group. Why LFG <Heroic> for 20 minutes if you can get better quest rewards on the next planet, which you've already out-leveled? All of this stuff is connected.

 

Fix the leveling, fix the grouping, fix the gearing.

[WickedDjinn]

They way people talk about wanting either a real RPG or a real MMO I'm convinced they don't know the definition of either.

[Ankido]

Nah it was like that before Cata. Blizzard has been moving towards making the game more solo friendly for years.

 

Not because they have all those levels to get passed, but because they don't believe that a player should ever need to group if they don't want to.

 

You are 100% correct. But....in WoTLK, it wasn't quite easy until they realized it after the launch. The best thing they did was removing elites in the world. Don't get me wrong, I want to like TOR but I feel they just messed the whole damn thing up and now they are scrambling to correct it.

 

SWG"s NGE all over again. I think the name "Star Wars/Lucas Arts" is just bad luck.

[hobieone]

its not so much that you can solo to level 50 every mmo out you can solo to max. it the fact that the game lack a social element. meaning there really no reason to group or gather some place to role play ect.

 

i have played mmo since they started. in all honesty there more reason to group and have gathering with other players for your own adventurers in a sand box mmo not a theme park mmo. i mean with swg before the nge my guild wold get together for rancor hunts or to search ot imps and not have to worry about levels just make up our adventure as we went or to harvest stuff off the critter for a very robust crafting system since every thing was made by the players. or yo can sit in a Catina for entrainment provided by other player that wanted to entertain other players. sand box mmo are just plain more conductive to promote rpg play as well as promoting player to play together.

[Baizak]

OP, there is a very small number of players that actively seek to get emotional responses from other players on these boards. The single player comment is just one of their many catch phrases they use to incite folks into flaming their threads. Edited January 7, 2012 by Baizak

[WickedDjinn]

With companions, ease of leveling and the gear that's handed out from quests, there isn't even a motivation to group. Why LFG <Heroic> for 20 minutes if you can get better quest rewards on the next planet, which you've already out-leveled? All of this stuff is connected.

 

Fix the leveling, fix the grouping, fix the gearing.

 

You could say the same exact thing about WoW or Rift but no one would say they aren't mmos. Hell those games are easy and don't require groups even without companion systems.

[krinaman]

I can only guess. But I suspect that some people who played a lot outleveled the masses and found themselves alone on planets. Start an alt and redo the lower planets and tell me you don't run into someone. Some of the planets are so busy that you see over crowded complaints.

 

The second guess would be the lack of LFD so players can't LFD from 0 - 50 while standing in the the city and never solo quest or leave the city for that matter like some other game.

 

Personally, this game seems like any other MMO to me, if anything it has more group options then some I played.

[Ankido]

@hobieone

 

You are a smart man my friend. There was nothing like SWG when it first started. I remember the Rancor hunting and massive PVP in player created cities. I will never forget Sin City which was my town. Sandbox sometimes is the way to go. So many people are complaining about the zones. I understand it's Star Wars and looks beautiful but you feel boxed in. It doesn't give you that feeling as if the world is endless.

 

From the deepest part of my heart I want to thank each and every one of you for not trolling and flaming my opinions. It's good to know there are people out there in the forums that can still chat with people on a professional level.

 

Once again, this could have been one of the greatest MMORPG's of it's kind. Unfortunately, this is biowares first MMORPG and this was predicted.

 

Safe Hunting!!!

[rmack]

The heavy instancing, no open world feel, no reason at all to explore (every planet is a straight path to the next quest) super linear questing and a B movie story. Also no one else has any effect on what happens in my main story. It feels like a modded single player RPG to host a few players in a LAN.

[HelluvaJedi]

You could say the same exact thing about WoW or Rift but no one would say they aren't mmos. Hell those games are easy and don't require groups even without companion systems.

 

I don't recall saying anything about those games, or that SWTOR was not an MMO. Anybody who says that is just exaggerating.

[Enistre]

I can only guess. But I suspect that some people who played a lot outleveled the masses and found themselves alone on planets. Start an alt and redo the lower planets and tell me you don't run into someone. Some of the planets are so busy that you see over crowded complaints.

 

The second guess would be the lack of LFD so players can't LFD from 0 - 50 while standing in the the city and never solo quest or leave the city for that matter like some other game.

 

Personally, this game seems like any other MMO to me, if anything it has more group options then some I played.

 

I kind of agree with you on this point. Especially since you can't solo LFD from - 0 50.

[Culveren]

My take on this is:

 

All the planets are 100's of instances, so you might bump in to one person and never again in your gaming life. You cannot therefore build up a casual relationship of just bumping into someone while questing every day.

 

I disagree, i have made more friends in this game than ever before in an MMO. I have always grouped up for the heroic content, and i always add the players as friends afterwards. I do the same with the flashpoints. Now when i log on i usually have 10 friends online even in off hours, plus my guild is giant and usually has 20 to 60 players online. So i am always able to group up for flashpoints.

 

Running around dromund Kaas i saw tons of people, and so far on balmora i have also seen lots of people where ever i go.

 

Sure you can turn this into a single player game, and its more enjoyable than most mmos are as a single player game, but there are tons of opportunities to get together and play with friends.

 

TBH i have not tried raiding, so i am not sure as to how broken it is currently, but im not worried that it will be fixed in good time. As well as more raids being added. TBH i know it was easy to rush to level 50, and enjoyable, but i think it is not a good strategy for a newly released mmo. I think it is better to make a bunch of alts, see what class you like the most by getting a bunch of chars to level 20 or so, rather than take one or two up to higher levels. Because usually the later game content is more broken than early game content at launch.

[Jalliah]

Can't you get to 50 by yourself in any MMO, just by grinding mobs though?

 

 

Yes in most all of them you can. You don't even have to just grind mobs. Just do quests. I have played other MMOs and honestly don't find the requirements for HAVING to group with other players a whole lot different then the ones I've recently played. (Rift and WOW). You'll miss out on some leveling content if you don't group (dungeons and instances) but you can easily get to level cap without doing any of it.

 

There's the same options here. I could play this game to 50 without ever doing the group stuff. I could do the same in something like Rift beyond the public temporary groups that happen in the open world. In fact in that game most of my alts have been done solo while skipping most of the grouped content like dungeons. In WOW beyond using the LFG for dungeons the majority of my leveling was a solo quest grind affair.

 

I do however think that the instancing does play a factor in how it 'feels'. You don't see everyone that's supposedly on your server and that's just weird. Hope they change that.

 

I also think that having load screens for different areas makes it 'feel' more like how some SPs play and not like some other MMOs. I know it did for me but that was just something to get used too. Having a load screen doesn't however mean SP.

 

 

Ironically even though for me the 'feel' of leveling is like SP games played I'm finding I'm grouping way more during it then I have in the other MMOs I've experienced. I also have got more people on my friends list, beyond the guild I joined then I did when I played the other ones. Find this way one way easier to make friends and play with them again beyond a group then I did with other ones for some reason.

 

However one of the things I do like about this game is that if I don't feel like grouping during a play period the by myself experience is more engaging then other MMOs I've played. To me it feels more alive that way.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Jalliah

[Ankido]

On a quick note, you'll find a lot of "You must complete missions before you can do that.". Good luck with that. I'm in Quesh and there are so many missions I can't do because i have to complete other missions. It's quite ridiculous.

[Vydor_HC]

There are many things that the game does that make the game feel like a single player game. Even the mechanics of phasing separate players from each other. But the biggest thing for me is you can easily accomplish the major parts of the game alone, never having to rely on other players.

 

It all starts from the opening screens, the "Intro Screen" that tells the class story for your character. That sets the tone that it's a single player game. Then every important step in your character progression, is accomplished in the class story line, which encourages you to play solo. No other players really want to be a part of that unless they are really bored.

 

Crafting requires no interdependence on other players skill sets. I can craft everything in my list from 0 to 400 without having to barter or trade or set up a partnership with other trade skills.

 

There are other things, that just make the game feel solo instead of mulitplayer. Sure, the game is built on an MMO engine, and you CAN group up...but it does not encourage that style of play, in fact just the opposite, which makes it a single player game to me.

[WickedDjinn]

You are 100% correct. But....in WoTLK, it wasn't quite easy until they realized it after the launch. The best thing they did was removing elites in the world. Don't get me wrong, I want to like TOR but I feel they just messed the whole damn thing up and now they are scrambling to correct it.

 

SWG"s NGE all over again. I think the name "Star Wars/Lucas Arts" is just bad luck.

 

You might be over thinking it. I believe BW just wanted to make a standard theme park mmo with heavier story elements. They accomplished that.

 

I can understand people being disappointed because they wanted it to go in a different direction, that's there right.

 

However claiming its less of an mmo doesn't make sense. It just doesn't. I've yet to see a single argument that can't be shot down by simply looking at what people do consider MMOs.

[Vydor_HC]

Can't you get to 50 by yourself in any MMO, just by grinding mobs though?

 

Sure you could, but that's not the point really. In some older games though, you couldn't really achieve the most important aspects for your character unless you had a group. DAoC for example had a class quest where the epic encounter could not be soloed. Plus they had Master levels and Champion levels where the quests required raids, not just groups.

 

But the most important thing to it, if you played solo, the games made it very difficult to progress. Playing solo you knew from the beginning you were working against the grain and that it was outside the design of the game.

[Irishbrewed]

First mmo you can solo from 1-50 and not feel so grindy if you enjoy the story or are a fan of games like KOTOR or ME. definatley an mmo but has something for the single player man/woman too. Edited January 7, 2012 by Irishbrewed

[Culveren]

Sure you could, but that's not the point really. In some older games though, you couldn't really achieve the most important aspects for your character unless you had a group. DAoC for example had a class quest where the epic encounter could not be soloed. Plus they had Master levels and Champion levels where the quests required raids, not just groups.

 

But the most important thing to it, if you played solo, the games made it very difficult to progress. Playing solo you knew from the beginning you were working against the grain and that it was outside the design of the game.

 

I think this is an older style though, perhaps a better one, but its not what most people seem to want out of an mmo currently.

 

I agree that it is possible to solo too much of the content, but i would not say that this game is anything close to a single player game. I have grouped up easily 20 times in the first 20 levels, for the heroics and running multiple hammer stations. I have also done PVP which is obviously impossible in single player. The PVP needs refinement and the combat system needs to be more responsive, but neither turns the game into a single layer experience. I still have had more fun grouping in flashpoints than doing solo quests.