Why Didn't Bioware Innovate Anything in SW:TOR - ESPECIALLY in the End-game?

[Juntts]

That is in fact false. If that was the case World of Warcraft would not be around.

 

No....WoW had the same amount of content as SWTOR now in 2004 (which isn't much) but they didn't have to compete with other HUGE games. WoW was very original at the time. There were only a handful of previous MMO's out there, and they weren't even that popular.

[Aricori]

No, not quite. Each class has a minor side-story chain that doesn't even grant them most of the experience required to level up. Most of your experience comes from generic, "hey, do me a favor and I'll give you some soup" quests.

 

WoW had class quests as well, and dear I say, they were quite marvelous, unique, and compelling.

 

 

Try again.

 

Yeah, those awesome mount quests for Paladin and Warlock that were pretty much brushed away...other than that???

[insecta]

I honestly can NOT name 1 thing in the entire game, nevermind the end-game, that Bioware innovated in. Sure, it voiced-over its quests, but that's not innovation. That's simply a quality of life measure for those of us who dislike reading.

 

Choices in actual quests generally don't matter either. It's a Hobson's choice. You have two choices in reality: accept the quest or decline. Everything else is irrelevant and inconsequential. They've just added in a volume of insignificant dialogue that merely adds tedium to accepting a quest, so much so that many of us feel compelled to bash our spacebar when in the process of accepting a quest.

 

 

So, in reality, Bioware has really not innovated anything all. This is just another WoW clone dressed up as something that it's not.

 

 

If any of you disagree, I challenge you to name me ONE THING that Bioware innovated upon. One. Single. Thing.

 

 

I speculate that Bioware is in doomsday mode. They know that this is the Hindenburg; that this is Germany in October, 1945; that this is the 11th hour in 1917. They know what's coming, and they're conducting damage control and minimizing losses.

 

If this game is a clone of anything it most certainly isn't WoW because wow isn't the most original MMO out there, but I guess you haven't played anything else so your knowledge of the topic you are talking about is very limited. WoW's combat is a dirent rip of Asheron's Calls combat a game which you probably did not play or heard of. WoW is still a good game but you shouldn't treat it like the jesus of all MMOs.

 

There is end game, there are heroics you can do as well as 2 raids with 3 modes of difficulty. What more do you expect on the release? If you want to do laps around your capital city while waiting in the queue to do something mindless that a *********** monkey could do, you should go back to WoW and make SWTOR community better.

 

You are probably one of those incompetent players that gets kicked out of groups coz of the derp factor present. It's not the game's fault your intelligence is stopping you from experiencing its end game.

[Jethillex]

In the traditional sense, innovation is a cure to a previous uncured problem. In the MMO world, however, a lack of innovations means a lack of success because a lack of innovation means that there's no real incentive for players to play your MMO over an existing one.

 

WoW was an EQ clone when it launched, people still flocked to it. Yes Blizzard an established player base, but so does Bioware and it also has Star Wars behind it as well. I suspect SWTOR will branch off in it's own direction as more content and changes are added much like WoW did.

 

No it can't yet compete with WoW in terms of content because WoW has had over 7 years of development while SWTOR just got released but SWTOR is ahead of where WoW was in terms of content when it launched and it also had a much smoother launch.

 

WoW had class quests as well, and dear I say, they were quite marvelous, unique, and compelling.

 

You mean like the rogue quest line that was never finished?

Edited January 8, 2012 by Jethillex

[Majestic_Jazz]

Cinematic story-telling in a MMO is an invention.

 

Having a fully voiced atmosphere where the NPCs talk to you which allow you to immerse yourself into your character is an innovation.

 

SWTOR is a great game and I am enjoying it. It is clear that you do not enjoy it, so why are you still here?

[Teladis]

Because the people who run this company are morons that did not listen to testers feedback?

[Majestic_Jazz]

Most people skip the dialogue. Just saying lol. They should've been innovative on something else other than story

 

There are ~1.5 million subscriptions.

 

How do you know that most of them skip the dialoge?

 

Again, just because YOU don't care about the story or dialog doesn't mean that EVERYONE else thinks like you do.

 

Again, maybe SWTOR isn't for you, so why not just move along?

[Vecke]

In the traditional sense, innovation is a cure to a previous uncured problem. In the MMO world, however, a lack of innovations means a lack of success because a lack of innovation means that there's no real incentive for players to play your MMO over an existing one.

 

I respectfully disagree. I love MMO's and wanted an enjoyable MMO in the Star Wars universe. For me, this game provides that. Whether or not the game is fun to play is far more important than whether or not it has some token "innovative" feature that's more of a marketing tool than an improvement to gameplay.

 

Innovation is secondary to fun for me. I've seen plenty of "innovative" features in MMOs that were horrible, and I've seen some that I liked.

 

The thing that will keep people playing is whether or not they have fun playing it. If it's not fun for you, you'll move on. It is fun for me, so I plan on staying a while.

 

Innovation plays no part in whether or not I stay. Fun does.

[jeinasindorei]

It's your fault you never read the quest text. I read the text and I understood the story amazingly well.

 

There's nothing engaging or interesting about the generic "go into Sunken Temple at level 50" class quests WoW used to have. Not to mention, they got rid of their class quests because a majority of them sucked and had no good story or reasoning behind them. There was no connection between character and quest.

 

And to answer your previous question:

 

The crafting system in SWTOR is highly innovative compared to other MMOs. Having to collect all the mats yourself and then afk for 20 minutes while you spammed crafting to get 5 levels is painfully tedious and always made me dread leveling up another crafting profession.

 

Thankfully, in SWTOR, my companions can do all my crafting while I go PvP or do FP or Quest.

 

All MMO endgame's are the same, nothing has been innovated since Everquest. Deal with it. Get people together -> Kill stuff -> Get loot.

[jeinasindorei]

Most people skip the dialogue. Just saying lol. They should've been innovative on something else other than story

 

Did you take a poll of "most people" to come to this conclusion, or are you just assuming everyone does exactly the same thing as you?

[jeinasindorei]

People just have to find something to bash SWTOR on. Obviously they do not like the game but yet they still post on these forums wanting people to hate the game with them. It is just immature.

 

Why can't they just leave and stop posting here?

 

I hate Call of Duty and what it does to the FPS genre, but you don't see me over at the Infinity Ward forums bashing Modern Warfare 3.....

 

If you believe most of the "I'm cancelling because of (insert reason here)" posts, they'll be gone in 2 weeks.

[lycrates]

It is kinda of sad that SWTOR chose to copy WoW, especially at a time when all of us player were tired of the classic WoW mechanics (such as static combat, fed-ex quests, boring talent trees, lame story (swtor is no lord of the rings) etc.)

 

Whether SWTOR will be the Hinderburgh actually depends on whether Guild Wars 2 will be a good game or not. GW2 is based on some really innovative ideas and all of them sound really fun -- except that it seems to be lacking good endgame PvE, (which I guess is the only thing that could ruin that game). In other words, SWTORs fate, now depends if GW2 has decent endgame PvE. If it does, then SWTOR will get a merciful instant death. If it doesnt, then SWTOR will continue to do ok for a while if developers manage to get their act together in 2012.

 

The funny thing from all these is that I am conviced that Blizzard decided to go Panda because they thought that SWTOR would get all the older audience and so they wanted appeal to the younder audiences. Right now they must be kicking themselves in the head. If WoW had chosen a decent theme for its expantion, it would definately get all the people back from SWTOR.

 

Overall, if I had to describe SWTOR, I would say it is WoW without all the features.

Edited January 8, 2012 by lycrates

[Majestic_Jazz]

If you believe most of the "I'm cancelling because of (insert reason here)" posts, they'll be gone in 2 weeks.

 

I mean it just gets annoying. I don't mind constructive critisism in any fashion. I believe no game is perfect, including SWTOR, so if people want to list the things that could hurt SWTOR, that is fine. What I hate are all of the threads bashing SWTOR because it isn't like the <insert MMO title> and so on.

 

It seems like every week there is a new theme. First it was SWTOR has no endgame and lazy PvP......then it was SWTOR isn't an MMO but a single player game.....now it is SWTOR isn't innovative. I cannot wait to see what next week brings!

[DesleDarksyde]

If any of you disagree, I challenge you to name me ONE THING that Bioware innovated upon. One. Single. Thing.

 

Cover mechanic...

 

/thread

[jeinasindorei]

I mean it just gets annoying. I don't mind constructive critisism in any fashion. I believe no game is perfect, including SWTOR, so if people want to list the things that could hurt SWTOR, that is fine. What I hate are all of the threads bashing SWTOR because it isn't like the <insert MMO title> and so on.

 

It seems like every week there is a new theme. First it was SWTOR has no endgame and lazy PvP......then it was SWTOR isn't an MMO but a single player game.....now it is SWTOR isn't innovative. I cannot wait to see what next week brings!

 

 

I always enjoy the "Why doesn't this game have (random WoW feature)?" threads when 3 months ago everyone was "This game better not be anything like WoW!"

[Thaonnor]

I agree with this thread. There are some things that they innovated, but most of these innovations are never going to take off and are proving to be a downfall in my opinion.

 

Voice acting - it is proving to be a lot more boring and repetitive. It is great the first time you play through. The next time you play through, you get to hear a lot of the same voice acting. Not to mention all new content now must be voice acted, meaning more $$ towards voice acting and less toward developing content.

 

Story - another innovation that is proving to be a lot more boring and repetitive than people expected. In other MMORPGs, you go pick up a quest, you go do it, you turn it in. It is fine to repeat these because they are just quests, just something you do. In SWTOR, you listen to the voice acted dialogue and make decisions. For each and every alt, you listen to the same boring story, the same dialogue options, etc, etc. I know people say "Well play a different class!" but the reality is that only ~15-20% of the quests are class quests, and the rest quickly get boring when you are redoing them over and over and over again. Same planets, same order, every time.

 

Other than that, I see no innovations in this game. Every one of the classes can be linked back to previous MMORPGs (even the Trooper/Smuggler energy systems, even the cover system).

 

Another reason people are finding these issues so hard to live with is that there isn't a solid game behind them! If a game has flaws at the design level, it is easy to get the community to stick behind you while you work toward a better design. However, when the current systems that are "working as intended" are working so horribly and are so clunky and old feeling, it is hard to get people to not complain.

 

To the folks who keep saying "Well just leave then!" I say this - We have been around for just as long as you have, YEARS of waiting for this game, anticipating a great experience, hearing the promises of innovation, a new kind of MMORPG. After so long, it is hard to just say "Oh well, it sucks" without expressing our extreme disappointment with what has come to fruition after so much hype. It is not something you can walk away from without at least letting it be known how you feel - I heard a quote one time that really applies here...

 

"It is not the fans but the critics that move any project forward"

 

Really it is the truth. If everyone on these forums was the typical fanboy "Oh my gosh, this is an amazing game, I'm having so much fun!" then nothing would be done about the horribly unresponsive combat system, the lack of content at end game, the issues with PvP currently, etc.

 

To ask for the critics to simply leave and not let Bioware know why they are in fact losing the critic's business would be foolish for the fans, as it is the critics who are leaving that will tell Bioware 10x more about what they need to do to keep the game alive than the fans who settle ever will.

 

Most of all, I am disappointed in Bioware. They did exactly as most predicted they would - they took a great game, and let the pressure for a good release force a launch that they were not ready for. It is odd to me, because I honestly believe that they would have had just as successful of a launch a month after the holiday season, as most people pre-ordered the game anyways and there was no big "Christmas Day Rush" as they seemed to believe there would be. Unfortunately, I think the next 6 months of fixes and content additions will determine the fate of this game, and they will have to do it without quite a few subscribers who are leaving after the free time is up until there is more polish put into the game.

[Majestic_Jazz]

It kinda of sad that SWTOR chose to copy WoW, especially at a time when all of us player were tired of the classic WoW mechanics (such as static combat, fed-ex quests, boring talent trees, fed-ex story etc.)

 

Whether SWTOR will be the Hinderburgh actually depends on whether Guild Wars 2 will be a good game or not. GW2 is based on some really innovative ideas and all of them sound really fun except that it seems to lacking good endgame PvE, which I guess is the only thing that could ruin that game. In other words, SWTORs fate, now depends if GW2 has decend endgame PvE. If it does, then SWTOR will get a merciful instant death. If it doesnt, then SWTOR will continue to do ok for a while if developers manage to get their act together in 2012.

 

The funny thing from all these is that I am conviced that Blizzard decided to go Panda because they thought that SWTOR would get all the older audience and so they wanted appeal to the younder audiences. Right now they must be kicking themselves in the head. If WoW had chosen a decent theme for its expantion, it would definately get all the people back from SWTOR.

 

Overall, if I had to describe SWTOR, I would say it is WoW without all the features.

 

 

WHO CARES! Just enjoy the game!

 

If SWTOR was so much like WoW, then how come gamers like myself decided to get into MMOs with SWTOR and not WoW?

 

If SWTOR is so much like WoW, then how come WoW does not have voiced NPCs and cinematic storytelling?

 

-----------------------

 

You all act like every game CANNOT pull features from previously popular games. Doom is one of the greatest FPS of all time because of it's setting and gameplay design, however, it was pretty much like Castle Wolfenstein, but that doesn't take away from the Doom legacy.

 

Forza is like Gran Turismo in many ways, but that doesn't take away from the idea that Forza is one of the better racing games of the past 10 years or so.

 

I mean why do you act like SWTOR was supposed to resurrect the dead and cure cancer?

[SnoggyMack]

That's a given, but why make a game and spend so much money on it if you're "lazy?"

 

To get 60 bucks from you and a few million other people. They got your 60 bucks, so that's one.

[Thaonnor]

just make it plain obvious you're a WoW fan boy. I never cared anything about the story in my qeusts when leveling in WoW it was boring and you did the same over and over again.

 

Here I am enjoying questing and taking my time to do the quests and taking time to follow the story.

 

Please level another character and eat your words. This game is the exact same. You will see when you level another character - the vast majority of the quests are non-class specific and you will be redoing over and over again doing the same thing every character you make.

 

Please do not discuss things you do not know anything about, as we can assume from your "taking time to do the quests and follow the story". Once you have finished with your first character, and level another one, THEN come back and discuss how repetitive or non-repetitive things are.

[Baaddare]

I honestly can NOT name 1 thing in the entire game, nevermind the end-game, that Bioware innovated in. Sure, it voiced-over its quests, but that's not innovation. That's simply a quality of life measure for those of us who dislike reading.

 

Choices in actual quests generally don't matter either. It's a Hobson's choice. You have two choices in reality: accept the quest or decline. Everything else is irrelevant and inconsequential. They've just added in a volume of insignificant dialogue that merely adds tedium to accepting a quest, so much so that many of us feel compelled to bash our spacebar when in the process of accepting a quest.

 

 

 

 

So, in reality, Bioware has really not innovated anything all. This is just another WoW clone dressed up as something that it's not.

 

 

 

If any of you disagree, I challenge you to name me ONE THING that Bioware innovated upon. One. Single. Thing.

 

 

I speculate that Bioware is in doomsday mode. They know that this is the Hindenburg; that this is Germany in October, 1945; that this is the 11th hour in 1917. They know what's coming, and they're conducting damage control and minimizing losses.

 

 

no fully voiced is an inovation, I woudl say having your companions craft while your offline is another. Having the ability to have all the different companions doing different things at once is inovative

[Meltaman]

It kinda of sad that SWTOR chose to copy WoW, especially at a time when all of us player were tired of the classic WoW mechanics (such as static combat, fed-ex quests, boring talent trees, fed-ex story etc.)

 

Whether SWTOR will be the Hinderburgh actually depends on whether Guild Wars 2 will be a good game or not. GW2 is based on some really innovative ideas and all of them sound really fun except that it seems to lacking good endgame PvE, which I guess is the only thing that could ruin that game. In other words, SWTORs fate, now depends if GW2 has decend endgame PvE. If it does, then SWTOR will get a merciful instant death. If it doesnt, then SWTOR will continue to do ok for a while if developers manage to get their act together in 2012.

 

The funny thing from all these is that I am conviced that Blizzard decided to go Panda because they thought that SWTOR would get all the older audience and so they wanted appeal to the younder audiences. Right now they must be kicking themselves in the head. If WoW had chosen a decent theme for its expantion, it would definately get all the people back from SWTOR.

 

Overall, if I had to describe SWTOR, I would say it is WoW without all the features.

 

Disagree, it is honestly quite shameful to call SWTOR a WoW clone because of its similar playstyle. About Guild Wars 2 though, that game is not going to have much of an effect on the game. Why? Because GW2 is a free-to-play game. Both games are not very comparable because one has a subscription fee and the other does not. A player's attitude towards a game that is FTP is VERY different compared to a sub-based game.

 

When you are paying for content per you expect a lot more from a game. If it is free then it doesn't matter to the player. In fact anyone can play both games at the same time but you must accept the fact that SWTOR has the best story out of any MMO ever created, this cannot be argued. If there is any determining factor on who plays what is because of either money or time but between these two MMOs it is mostly about time rather than money because seriously who would pay $30 a month for 2 MMOs that eat up time most people do not possess?

Edited January 8, 2012 by Meltaman

[Thaonnor]

WHO CARES! Just enjoy the game!

 

 

This is like me saying "Wow, I just found a finger in my soup" and you replying "Who cares! Just enjoy the soup!"

 

What little enjoyment there was to be had in this game has already been enjoyed by a lot of us. You cannot enjoy what is already feeling old and repetitive.

[Daedricshots]

Cover mechanic...

 

/thread

 

Dont forget crafting system

Bonus quests while in a quest area

Companions

Space Combat

Advanced classes

[Xugos]

This is like me saying "Wow, I just found a finger in my soup" and you replying "Who cares! Just enjoy the soup!"

 

What little enjoyment there was to be had in this game has already been enjoyed by a lot of us. You cannot enjoy what is already feeling old and repetitive.

 

^ That was slightly grotesque, but it paints an accurate picture.

[Meltaman]

I agree with this thread. There are some things that they innovated, but most of these innovations are never going to take off and are proving to be a downfall in my opinion.

 

Voice acting - it is proving to be a lot more boring and repetitive. It is great the first time you play through. The next time you play through, you get to hear a lot of the same voice acting. Not to mention all new content now must be voice acted, meaning more $$ towards voice acting and less toward developing content.

 

Story - another innovation that is proving to be a lot more boring and repetitive than people expected. In other MMORPGs, you go pick up a quest, you go do it, you turn it in. It is fine to repeat these because they are just quests, just something you do. In SWTOR, you listen to the voice acted dialogue and make decisions. For each and every alt, you listen to the same boring story, the same dialogue options, etc, etc. I know people say "Well play a different class!" but the reality is that only ~15-20% of the quests are class quests, and the rest quickly get boring when you are redoing them over and over and over again. Same planets, same order, every time.

 

Other than that, I see no innovations in this game. Every one of the classes can be linked back to previous MMORPGs (even the Trooper/Smuggler energy systems, even the cover system).

 

Another reason people are finding these issues so hard to live with is that there isn't a solid game behind them! If a game has flaws at the design level, it is easy to get the community to stick behind you while you work toward a better design. However, when the current systems that are "working as intended" are working so horribly and are so clunky and old feeling, it is hard to get people to not complain.

 

To the folks who keep saying "Well just leave then!" I say this - We have been around for just as long as you have, YEARS of waiting for this game, anticipating a great experience, hearing the promises of innovation, a new kind of MMORPG. After so long, it is hard to just say "Oh well, it sucks" without expressing our extreme disappointment with what has come to fruition after so much hype. It is not something you can walk away from without at least letting it be known how you feel - I heard a quote one time that really applies here...

 

"It is not the fans but the critics that move any project forward"

 

Really it is the truth. If everyone on these forums was the typical fanboy "Oh my gosh, this is an amazing game, I'm having so much fun!" then nothing would be done about the horribly unresponsive combat system, the lack of content at end game, the issues with PvP currently, etc.

 

To ask for the critics to simply leave and not let Bioware know why they are in fact losing the critic's business would be foolish for the fans, as it is the critics who are leaving that will tell Bioware 10x more about what they need to do to keep the game alive than the fans who settle ever will.

 

Most of all, I am disappointed in Bioware. They did exactly as most predicted they would - they took a great game, and let the pressure for a good release force a launch that they were not ready for. It is odd to me, because I honestly believe that they would have had just as successful of a launch a month after the holiday season, as most people pre-ordered the game anyways and there was no big "Christmas Day Rush" as they seemed to believe there would be. Unfortunately, I think the next 6 months of fixes and content additions will determine the fate of this game, and they will have to do it without quite a few subscribers who are leaving after the free time is up until there is more polish put into the game.

 

I am forced to agree with your huge wall of text that BioWare did not really innovate all that much on game-play compared to other games but the story part in your post is very easy to explain. People who have no interest in story will find this game is not for them and therefore they will say it sucks. Almost the entire game is built on the foundation of story-telling in a vast world with other people and if you don't like it then your $60-$150 is not coming back to you.