CHOICE IS AN ILLUSION - not an RPG - MMO on rails

[a_Stalker]

 

Hey

 

Are you reading Clive Cussler's books or is your name really that?

 

Regarding your comments, yes this is a *simple* single player game, you must follow a quest line from beginning to end. It does not even begin to compare with WOW. Let the fanboys fund the future development of this game with their own cash.

[krameriffic]

Really have you not played the trooper storyline? I seem to also remember having some interesting choices on my sage.

 

Of course if you just auto choose light everytime, then the problem is you not the game.

 

 

The only choice I ever made on the trooper that I actually felt and immediately knew it was the result of my choice was not killing Wraith on the first ship mission. I knew exactly how that was going to play out: I'd have to kill her later, and lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. I killed her in the final mission of act 1 instead. Choices need to have more serious consequences to make them actually matter. Light and dark side points, a scolding from General Garza, these things don't actually matter. I don't care if I just committed genocide in a game if it never has any repercussions other than a reprimand from my fictional superior officer.

 

If Wraith had fought alongside Tavus in the final battle of act 1, then that choice might have shown some teeth. It would have made that fight genuinely more difficult instead of her just being another pointless elite that I slaughtered along the way. In a true cRPG, your choices have real gameplay repercussions. You choose to help Iorveth in The Witcher 2, and the entire second act of the game is a completely different one compared to helping Roche. You cannot feasibly use dark side force powers in the KOTOR games without being evil yourself because their damage and force power costs are heavily dependent on your alignment. Same with using the light side force powers.

 

Do you understand what I'm saying here? These are real consequences that the player actually feels as they play the game. In SWTOR, the consequences are somewhere between nonexistent and minor. This is a result of the simple fact that MMO's are constrained by an extremely simplistic vision of game balance. In short, they are designed to be very easy, a game for the lowest common denominator where it is not possible to make really stupid choices that result in the game being exceptionally interesting or difficult. It's commercial diarrhea with no real substance or intrigue to the gameplay out of the occasional good mission in the class storylines.

 

 

I think what you want is the ability to explore more. But don't try to say that WoW has more 'story'. It has more blocks of pointless, boring text that inform you to kill X creatures or farm X plants.

 

The greatest lie that Bioware has perpetrated on its users is that fully-voiced dialog in a game makes it more story-driven and intriguing. This is not true. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had questing driven by big blocks of text and were ten times as interesting as things in SWTOR. That's because they weren't shackled by trying to make the game work for even the stupidest players. They made a rich, lush experience in which character choices mattered within the game world, not within the tone of voice or inconsequential musings of your character.

 

Stop using this excuse. SWTOR's greatest waste of effort and resources was on doing this stuff in such a time-consuming and high-quality way. People complain about the dialog assignment and reuse of voice actors in Skyrim, but that doesn't matter because everything is interesting enough within the actual confines of the game that they don't care. Voice acting doesn't make the game interesting, it makes the game files really big and convinces stupid fanboys that their game is story-driven in much the same way that a bunch of lightsaber duels convinced them that the Star Wars prequels were not complete garbage.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Notannos

[YeesBox]

Yes, illusion of choice, it is a BioWare game after all.

[SithZigg]

Could you name me an RPG, MMO or otherwise, where you can do precisely what you are ranting about? Edited January 10, 2012 by SithZigg

[Oneirophrenia]

I'm not really sure what the OP's point is. Choices (or freedom of choice) is often an illusion in real life as well. The extreme spectrums of ones choices are governed by preset boundries called laws with the rest mostly falling into the limitation imposed by levels of wealth.

 

You can't choose to kill someone in cold blood or walk out of Nordstroms with a pair of free shoes because it is against the law. You can't choose to impregnate 10 different women because you will be ruined for the rest of your life unless you have the income to pay all of that child support (see NBA players). If you only had 10 dollars in your wallet and had to choose between McDonalds or a 4 star bistro for lunch, the choice is obvious. As for where to go for vacation, with $2000 in your vacation savings account, you can take a nice long trip to Muai or the Bahamas. With $100 spare change in your account, you're either staying home or taking a day trip to your local lake. Frankly, many of the choices offered in RPGs are in some ways more idealistic than those that are offered in real life, no matter how limited it may seem.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Oneirophrenia

[TheHeadCapper]

The only choice I ever made on the trooper that I actually felt and immediately knew it was the result of my choice was not killing Wraith on the first ship mission. I knew exactly how that was going to play out: I'd have to kill her later, and lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. I killed her in the final mission of act 1 instead. Choices need to have more serious consequences to make them actually matter. Light and dark side points, a scolding from General Garza, these things don't actually matter. .

 

They matter to me but maybe not to you. That's why we don't all watch the same movie and read the same books, it's a difference of opinion. A blanket statement that this doesn't matter only releates to you and your opinion.

 

compared to any other MMO in the past, in my opinion this has way more in the way of choices avaiable, changes and consequences.

\

JAX?

[Aloro]

Unless of course you're light side.

 

The OP is right. Much of the choice in this game is an illusion. You make one choice at the beginning of the game, and then much of your path is set out before you.

 

You can change paths, you know.

 

You're CHOOSING to stick to one decision, and then saying that all choice has been stripped from you. That's nonsense.

 

My Jedi Knight started out good, but now he's well on his way to the Dark Side. How did that happen, you ask? I had choices in game that affected the outcomes for my character.

 

Are these choices meaningful? Sure. They have both narrative and mechanical impacts on the game. Are these choices vastly superior to those offered in other MMOs? Quite obviously, yes. In WoW, or LotRO, or AoC, or WAR... narrative choices don't have mechanical effects, and almost never have meaningful narrative effects either. LotRO's one of the most story-driven MMOs in history, and yet what real narrative choices do players have? Essentially none. Well, at one point, you can decide if a Ranger stays in the Shire, or heads off with the Grey Company. Every single quest in SWTOR gives me that much choice or more.

[Cameirus]

BW had openly stated in an interview (on totalbiscuit I think) that the "on the rails" questing is intentional!

 

The reasoning is that as the character never look lost on teh films and go from A to B according to a storey, thats what they wanted in an MMO....LOL, OF course they *********** do, its a movie, no one wants to pay to watch a film of people randomly exploring planets for fun,.....Stephen Reid (or whatever, he gave the interview) obviously does not understand the difference between a game and a movie.

[TheHeadCapper]

BW had openly stated in an interview (on totalbiscuit I think) that the "on the rails" questing is intentional!

 

The reasoning is that as the character never look lost on teh films and go from A to B according to a storey, thats what they wanted in an MMO....LOL, OF course they *********** do, its a movie, no one wants to pay to watch a film of people randomly exploring planets for fun,.....Stephen Reid (or whatever, he gave the interview) obviously does not understand the difference between a game and a movie.

 

Your opinion is fact right?

 

Seriously........

[run_hello]

I'm level 47 and shudder to think about starting an alt and repeating the same process again. In other MMOs it doesn't seem like such a chore.

 

I can see myself getting to 50, becoming bored in 2 months while they fix mounted emotes, and checking out The Secret World.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Paralassa
content

[TheRealDestian]

I must compare it to WoW in that, in WoW, you had different ways to level and different zones etc. You could choose where to go and when, with whom, and how to level... you could grind, or you could quest, or even just PVP, or do some combination thereof. You could choose the zones to go to... bored with helping the elves Ashenvale? Head to another zone of your choice. DO WHATEVER YOU FEEL LIKE.

 

1. WoW gave you ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE in any of the quest lines.

 

2. You can travel to different planets in SWTOR to quest on as many of the leveling areas overlap. Aside from the class quests, you can level where ever you want, however you want. You can PvP your way to 50 if that's what you want to do.

 

Seriously, you're saying WoW has more freedom? You're insane...

Edited January 10, 2012 by TheRealDestian

[Andryah]

.......what I wished it to be.

 

The crust of the bisquit right there folks!

 

The OP wished (fantisized) and their wish did not come true.

 

How that makes this NOT an MMO though confuzzles me. I'm going to chalk it up to OPs desire to express their loss and dissatisfaction through oblique attacks on the game, rather then an actual lecture on MMO basics.

 

OPs results in this experiment do not necessarily reflect those of other players, no matter how big a wall of text they confront us with.

[maestruljedi]

The Fallout series are one of my favorite games ever. But what you're saying isn't possible without heavy phasing. Some characters are important to the story line and not just for one class. Think of 1000 players all making different choices along the way, and all choices having a small impact on the outcome. You would get an huge number of outcomes that couldn't be merged, because player X killed npc A, but player Y did for example.

 

So this could be fixed with phasing but that would mean one huge single-player game, with some ops and warzones to meet other players. That's not a MMO. I'm not saying I like the idea of a mmo kotor - more often than not i would prefer kotor3. These things are easy to do in a single player game, since there's one "phase" for the duration of the game. But as far as i'm concerned, BW didn't fail with ToR, they did a pretty good job.

 

Now i'm not saying they made the perfect game from the "choices" point of view. Far from it. I feel like the dark side choices are mindless and extremist, they lack finesse, cunning and long-term planning. That's not how the sith lords roll. This is one of the reasons 6 out of my 8 chars are light side aligned. I would rather be a boyscout than a mindless puppet.

 

There's also a lack of rewarding being neutral, like someone pointed out. KotoR2 was all about neutrality, all about not going into extremes because the consequences are hard to see on the long run. Why is there no neutral vendor, with stuff restricted to both dark I and light I ?

 

But as far as gameplay goes, it's as fun or boring as you make it. If you think you're too cool, pull 2 packs at once. Solo heroic 2/4 quests. Try to solo flashpoints. Play dress-up. Hunt datacrons. The galaxy is your sandbox.

[al_giordino]

BW had openly stated in an interview (on totalbiscuit I think) that the "on the rails" questing is intentional!

 

The reasoning is that as the character never look lost on teh films and go from A to B according to a storey, thats what they wanted in an MMO....LOL, OF course they *********** do, its a movie, no one wants to pay to watch a film of people randomly exploring planets for fun,.....Stephen Reid (or whatever, he gave the interview) obviously does not understand the difference between a game and a movie.

 

This

 

This is what I said in the beginning, in that I feel like I'm simply controlling a main character in a movie...moving them from place to place according to what is to happen next in the "movie".

 

That's why it's painful after a while, because you have to spend 10 minutes running somewhere because that's what you have to do - not because you chose to.

[Ben_C]

*snip* what I wished it to be.

 

It seems most of these types of post come down to expectation management.

[Barathos]

Like them sending an email with what happened to them after? This usually involves closure and is related to what you chose in the quest.

 

Talking about class quest here, and no, that's not what i'm talking about.

 

If somebody came to kill me / help me for killing/saving their cousin or SOMETHING, THAT would be nice to see. Or if I didn't help X and helped Y but killed A then it would = this ending.

 

Not this "Everybody basicly has the same story as everybody else, but you get to make some choices on this planet that will NEVER EVER be felt EVER as you go further along your quest"

[krameriffic]

They matter to me but maybe not to you. That's why we don't all watch the same movie and read the same books, it's a difference of opinion. A blanket statement that this doesn't matter only releates to you and your opinion.

 

compared to any other MMO in the past, in my opinion this has way more in the way of choices avaiable, changes and consequences.

\

JAX?

 

But why do they matter to you? Do you have an emotional connection to the 384 House Organa hostages that you just let die? I don't care about them, I've never seen them, I'm not a member of House Organa, I haven't even been on Alderaan long enough to feel their plight or the consequences of the war. Caring about things isn't guaranteed by virtue of some guy telling me that I should care about them. I wanted to kill the evil House Thul Baron who kept taunting me a lot more than I wanted to save the poor captives that I cared nothing about, so I killed him instead. But you know what, doing the evil thing didn't feel evil. It didn't even feel right. I felt nothing at all because I didn't care one iota about anybody involved and I knew my evil choice wouldn't have any negative repercussions.

 

Do you understand why choices in these sort of games need to have GAMEPLAY CONSEQUENCES? It's to make the player care about things that they don't have the time, resources, or artistic skill to make me care about within the confines of a game. It's not easy to make a player of a game care about clouds of ones and zeroes, but it is easy to make the player care about gameplay consequences. You're fooling yourself if you actually think these decisions matter.

Edited January 10, 2012 by krameriffic

[al_giordino]

1. WoW gave you ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE in any of the quest lines.

 

2. You can travel to different planets in SWTOR to quest on as many of the leveling areas overlap. Aside from the class quests, you can level where ever you want, however you want. You can PvP your way to 50 if that's what you want to do.

 

Seriously, you're saying WoW has more freedom? You're insane...

 

Tell me what exp areas overlap.

 

Balmorra 15-20

Nar Shadaa 20-24

Tatooine 24-28

Alderaan 28-32

 

etc

 

am I missing something?

 

Hence you must level where the developers say you must level, unless you don't want to level.. Going back to somewhere doesn't help because, while the quests/zone might be "cool", the exp would be pitiful.

 

You also can't jump ahead - say my level 24 is super powerful, I can't just skip Tatooine to go to Alderaan because all the quests there would be greyed/unavailable.

Edited January 10, 2012 by al_giordino

[mcfabulous]

I'm not really sure what the OP's point is. Choices (or freedom of choice) is often an illusion in real life as well. The extreme spectrums of ones choices are governed by preset boundries called laws with the rest mostly falling into the limitation imposed by levels of wealth.

 

You can't choose to kill someone in cold blood or walk out of Nordstroms with a pair of free shoes because it is against the law. You can't choose to impregnate 10 different women because you will be ruined for the rest of your life unless you have the income to pay all of that child support (see NBA players). If you only had 10 dollars in your wallet and had to choose between McDonalds or a 4 star bistro for lunch, the choice is obvious. As for where to go for vacation, with $2000 in your vacation savings account, you can take a nice long trip to Muai or the Bahamas. With $100 spare change in your account, you're either staying home or taking a day trip to your local lake. Frankly, many of the choices offered in RPGs are in some ways more idealistic than those that are offered in real life, no matter how limited it may seem.

 

 

the force is strong with this one

 

Tell me what exp areas overlap.

 

Balmorra 15-20

Nar Shadaa 20-24

Tatooine 24-28

Alderaan 28-32

 

etc

 

am I missing something?

 

Hence you must level where the developers say you must level, unless you don't want to level.. Going back to somewhere doesn't help because, while the quests/zone might be "cool", the exp would be pitiful.

 

you're stating the map shown levels as if they reflect on reality.

I was in Kaas until 18.

I was in balmorra from 18-26.

Compeltely skipped Nar Shadaa aside from class quest. Did about 40% of tat quests and skipped the rest and somehow made it to 33.

Edited January 10, 2012 by mcfabulous

[TheRealDestian]

That's why it's painful after a while, because you have to spend 10 minutes running somewhere because that's what you have to do - not because you chose to.

 

The MMO you're describing is a "sandbox" MMO.

 

SWTOR is not a sandbox MMO. SWG was a sandbox MMO and it failed.

[Kurnea]

In Fallout 3 I killed that DJ in the Washington ruins, which then proceeded to mess up the entire story line because he was a necessary character. Now that's freedom of choice. He shouldn't have been rude to me and maybe he'd still be alive. But that ability to forge your own destiny is what attached me to that game and gives it a great memory in my mind. The story was my own, the decision to kill him was my own.

 

Elder scrolls are much the same - I don't know what you're talking about. You can kill whoever you want in Elder Scrolls, steal from whoever you want... Kill someone and take over their house, or be a bandit hiding out in the woods, or a noble wizard whose friends with the king, CHOICE is the beauty of Elder Scrolls, and on top of that the quests/enemies actually provide a challenge as you proceed.

 

Oblivion at least had certain characters flagged as non-killable, for the specific purpose of preserving the storyline. Have you tried killing Martin? Doesn't work out unless you specifically mod the game to make him killable.

 

Fallout 3 also had some unkillable characters, as I'm pretty sure you couldn't kill your dad in that game. Standard Bethesda coding is if the character is essential to the main storyline, they're immortal.

[IGsChevy]

Elder scrolls are much the same - I don't know what you're talking about. You can kill whoever you want in Elder Scrolls, steal from whoever you want... Kill someone and take over their house, or be a bandit hiding out in the woods, or a noble wizard whose friends with the king, CHOICE is the beauty of Elder Scrolls, and on top of that the quests/enemies actually provide a challenge as you proceed.

 

Yes you have infinite choice in TES series to steal from whomever you wish and kill whomever you wish. Unless of course that person is a quest giver or somehow decided by the game to be "important." Then they suddenly have the gift of immortality. It's not freedom if you can't kill EVERYONE!!!

 

EDIT: Damn, someone beat me to it!

Edited January 10, 2012 by IGsChevy

[Sekhmit]

The MMO you're describing is a "sandbox" MMO.

 

SWTOR is not a sandbox MMO. SWG was a sandbox MMO and it failed.

 

Failed?

 

Most people who played before NGE would disagree.

 

In fact, as a sandbox MMO, SWG is the one i would cite as a success. Why? I cant really think of a better sandbox MMO.

[Awarkle]

The problem with Sandbox mmos is that the average MMO player is basically clueless they want direction they want quantifiable rewards.

 

most sandbox require you to give yourself the reward and wow basically ruined that for everyone, people want spoon feeding they want gratification even if its purple gear.

 

I personally prefered the older style mmos Daoc / EQ they were a bit more grinding but gave you more options to do at end game instead of "MUST FARM PURPLES!"

 

anywho thats my view most mmos are on rails and they will remain so while the developers chase the wow crowd for their money.

[JediMasterShake]

You can change paths, you know.

 

You're CHOOSING to stick to one decision, and then saying that all choice has been stripped from you. That's nonsense.

 

My Jedi Knight started out good, but now he's well on his way to the Dark Side. How did that happen, you ask? I had choices in game that affected the outcomes for my character.

 

Are these choices meaningful? Sure. They have both narrative and mechanical impacts on the game. Are these choices vastly superior to those offered in other MMOs? Quite obviously, yes. In WoW, or LotRO, or AoC, or WAR... narrative choices don't have mechanical effects, and almost never have meaningful narrative effects either. LotRO's one of the most story-driven MMOs in history, and yet what real narrative choices do players have? Essentially none. Well, at one point, you can decide if a Ranger stays in the Shire, or heads off with the Grey Company. Every single quest in SWTOR gives me that much choice or more.

 

"You can change paths..."

 

Oh, so instead of picking every light side option, I can now pick every dark side option? How is that better? You are still striving to be DARK or LIGHT.

 

But not launching with neutral relics - but really by making the light/dark meter have ANY effect on gear at all, Bioware has influenced story decisions needlessly. It was a horrible game design choice. Period.