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

[Rhudian]

I can play two Troopers and altough the general story is exactly the same, the details can be widely different. Yes, both can do all the same quests (or not, most quests are optionals and you can skip many and still level up fine) but the choices they make can be very different. And that makes them different persons. Roleplaying is more than "I saved Taris from the Fanghouls" or "I doomed Taris to the Fanghouls". The choices I make with my Medic in the quests define her as person. If I were to play another trooper, I could play the same story with a whole different person playing those same events.

 

"But it is still on rails!" *points at firts paragraph of this post*

It's not about what is coded, it's about what's designed.

 

 

The world, as designed, will always remain static. No matter what choices you made, Taris is no better or worse for your efforts. Heck, you are even encouraged to take the opportunity to do exactly the opposite set of heroic feats in the same place at the same time with the same character.

 

How many people will have to defeat the Locust before he turns away from his life of crime?

 

How is it that every other smuggler has the exact same team of sidekicks that my character does? How many privateers will I meet who will claim to have looted the same legendary treasuries? How many STDs did I pick up from miss 'You're my first!' on Nar Shaddaa?

 

How do I every other smuggler that I meet that they are delusional, and only I assembled my amazing crew accomplished those fantastic exploits?

Edited January 10, 2012 by Rhudian

[Veala]

Completely illusion of choice.

 

Saying that your "should I kill him or let him live?" choices as you progress matter for anything other than light/dark points is seriously laughable.

 

Play the same class twice, then come back and tell us how different the experience was.

 

With the IA story, a kill him or let him live choice completely locks you out of one of the endings. A series of more minor dialog choices impacts the availability of the ending at all. There are five different IA endings.

 

IA Ending spoilers:

 

You either become a rogue agent whose existence is erased, rebuild Imperial Intelligence and continue your old job, become an agent of the Sith, become the Hand of Darth Jadus, or truly defect to the Republic SIS.

 

 

I don't even see how it's possible for Bioware to wrap them all into one story when our next story content patch arrives.

 

I don't understand what you people are expecting. Most console RPGs don't offer that many possible outcomes =p

[Itose]

sounds like we are playing a different game.

 

Going to get 10 boar tusks for soup is no choice.

 

Guess you haven't noticed the recurring theme to every quest bonus then.

[RobHouse]

At OP, all the fallout games are REALLY good for choice, i suggest fallout 3 AND fallout new Vegas, i always thought Bethesda was better at this than Bioware... sorry but as far as immersion goes New Vegas > Mass effect. THATS RIGHT I SAID IT!

[TheHeadCapper]

Except that the world remains static. No matter what choices you made, Taris is no better or worse for your efforts. Heck, you are even encouraged to take the opportunity to do exactly the opposite set of heroic feats in the same place at the same time with the same character.

 

How many people will have to defeat the Locust before he turns away from his life of crime?

 

How is it that every other smuggler has the exact same team of sidekicks that my character does? How many privateers will I meet who will claim to have looted the same legendary treasuries? How many STDs did I pick up from miss 'You're my first!' on Nar Shaddaa?

 

How do I every other smuggler that I meet that they are delusional, and only I assembled my amazing crew accomplished those fantastic exploits?

 

Welcome to MMOs....seriously let's ask for things that are out of the realm of possiblity. With millions of players i want my story to be totally unique.

 

Great and i want a car made of diamonds.

[TheHeadCapper]

Guess you haven't noticed the recurring theme to every quest bonus then.

 

No i just don't care about the bonus, rewards or trophies that special snowflakes seem to obsess about.

 

I was having fun and enjoying the story.

 

Fail deflection is fail.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TheHeadCapper

[LizardSF]

How can you casually say "the **only** requirement is that you complete your class story" ?

 

This actually prohibits you from doing anything else. No companions, no space ship, no travel anywhere else.

 

So... you want specific quest rewards (companion, etc), but you don't want to do the quests to get them....

 

Yeah. That makes sense.

 

"You have to do all the quests!"

"No, you don't. You only need to do a small number of the total available to be able to progress."

"But then you don't get the cool stuff from the quests you don't do!"

/facepalm

 

 

Yes about the 3 characters in WOW, but as you have choices in levelling, as you can mix and match grinding, quests, dungeons etc, wide open explorable world, the SWTOR experience does not even compare.

 

Sorry, but SWTOR compares exactly. You can level by questing, grinding mobs, doing PVP, doing space battle. There's just as much "forced" content in WoW -- I remember running all over the world to unlock my druid shapechange abilities, my wife needed to do shaman quests to get some of her powers, and you used to have to do quests to get your Warlock pets -- don't know if you do anymore. Back when I played, you didn't even get your imp until level 10.

 

From what I can tell, your basic complaint is that you can't run from your starting zone to some other low level zone to quest there. Technically, you can in WoW, but it's difficult... I can't imagine trying to get a 1st level night elf to Goldshire without dying umpty-zillion times, unless they've added easy inter-continent teleporters since I played.

 

Overall, SWTOR is much less instanced than WoW... most of the time, when doing heroics with a group, I will see other groups in the same place, shooting the same mobs. Compare to WoW's single-party dungeons. Just because something says "phase" doesn't mean other players are locked out of it. There's also much more open-world group content, areas in the world filled with elite/champion mobs. There's a few of those in WoW, too, but mostly it's just a run-up to an instanced dungeon, not a quest area in itself.

[Sephendrine]

In Wow, in the goblin starting area there is a "quest" in the bank that has you press a button on your keyboard when a symbol flashes up on the screen. This is EXACTLY the same mechanism of those toys you buy at Babys R Us for infants lying in a crib to improve their eye-hand coordination.

 

WoW now does everything but actually stick a pacifier in your mouth. To compare SWTOR to a washed up baby game that is about to have fuzzy kung fu pandas is so absolutely hilarious it really deserves nothing but derision.

[TheRealDestian]

Lol whose crying? Whose complaining? I am providing FEEDBACK. Note the OP if you read it, you'd have learned I am a Star Wars fanboy and still playing SWTOR.

 

So suck it, all you "defenders" who come in to every post and bash anyone who provides FEEDBACK to the developers, you're all ridiculous and worse than the OPs you rail against.

 

There's a difference between "feedback" and insisting that you hate the game's biggest selling factor because you think it "forces you to do it"...

[Hvidhajen]

Not sure if op is a troll or stupid

[Nerdwing]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

[Kurnea]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

 

Actually, it's largely the voice dialogue that's considered a huge improvement.

[Bulivyf]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

 

go back 2 wow blizzdrone

[abishe]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

 

it's state of the art, don't you see????.

also like to add, why is 99% of the quests in this game involve killing xx mob?

thought this game was supoce be made of chooses?, why is their not a diplomatic path?, without killing a single creature?, that's stuff of legends.

[Anya_Halberd]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

 

I hate them both. Mostly the boars though. I can see their damn tusks. They each have TWO. Yet I have to kill a small countries worth of boars to get 10.

 

******** I say.

[TheRealDestian]

OMG... the "choice" he refers to must be the dialogue choices!!

 

NOT

 

So when people pointed out all of the huge fallacies in your argument, you resorted to trolling your own thread?

 

Telling...

[Dovafeyn]

My first ~15 levels or so I made choices made as if I were roleplaying (something I hardly EVER do in games). I wanted to feel connected to my character.

 

I killed a few NPCs who were real a-holes, and I saved some other people who didn't deserve a grisly fate. Then went to the light/dark side vendors and saw all of the relics were based on your light/dark points.

 

I had accrued 1200 light side and 1050 dark side. I could use exactly zero relics in the game.

 

Worst game design.

 

Ever.

 

Um, just so you know.......there is 35 more levels.

[LizardSF]

 

The world, as designed, will always remain static. No matter what choices you made, Taris is no better or worse for your efforts. Heck, you are even encouraged to take the opportunity to do exactly the opposite set of heroic feats in the same place at the same time with the same character.

 

And....what were you expecting?

 

To log in, and be told by an NPC, "Oh, hi $CHAR_NAME. I know I told you yesterday to go kill Some Guy, but it seems $SOME_OTHER_CHAR killed him while you were logged out. I hope you understand I'm not paying you since someone else did the job. You could go to some other planet, but I'm pretty sure by now most of the problems on them have been solved, too. Hey, I know... go out in the desert and shoot womprats for a while. They breed pretty fast, so it will be a week or two before they've all been exterminated. Have fun!"

 

You can't have an "impact" on the world if it's going to undercut someone else's opportunity to experience the same content. They're paying the same as you; why shouldn't they get to kill the same bosses as you?

 

In terms of the impact on your own story -- it could indeed be greater and the consequences more severe, but, as noted, people would whine incessantly if they made the "wrong" choice. As it is, people whine that they can't get the exact look for gear they want because of the LS/DS system. Imagine if you could make a choice at level 10 and find out at level 20 you couldn't get a starship, or you got a different companion than you might otherwise have had. The screams would be outrageous. I mean, hell, look at how much people whine that they can't dual-spec. ANYTHING that locks out a choice drives the whiners mad, and BioWare has to choose which whiners to placate.

[LizardSF]

So people really dont see the similarity between "Gather 10 Boar Tusks" and "Gather 10 Chemical samples for quest reward + voice acting + email with 200 credits down the line"?

 

Is the latter really so -REVOLUTIONARY- that people think its some radical innovation in MMO's?

 

No, it's a relatively simple progression.

 

That's still more than I get from other games. I'd rather move forward an inch than not at all.

 

Who is claiming "radical innovation"? Who is claiming "So totally awesome and new!!!"? It's an incremental improvement, and a positive one. What's so hard to grasp about that?

[Blackfriar]

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.

 

This. My commando has been chewed out three times for disclosing Top Secret information because she's such a save-the-world-goody-two-shoes.

 

My Vanguard is more of a rigid by-the-book hoo-rah-emotionless-killer kind of guy and has made different choices in those situations.

 

And I wonder why I can't report Garza for her ordering me to kill people suspected of having unwilling cybernetic implants. That's murder and an illegal order which, no doubt, was recorded by my mission-recording gear in my armor. Yet nothing happened to her, either. Even though she ordered me to murder three innocent civilians.

 

So far, none of my choices has make any difference that I can see. In fact the only difference I can really see is my crafting choices... He's a slicer and robs everyone blind and nobody seem to care... And that he has a boat-load of credits while my Armortech Commando is dirt poor.

 

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.

 

And this too. Except for some gear which I don't own, the light-side/dark-side choices I've made have been rather pointless. Never mind I don't agree with some of them.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Yes. Honestly, the worst thing BioWare ever did for CRPGs and the industry was to spend all that money on voice acting and make it some kind of 'standard.' Since they started this trend they've been padding thier games with excess running are re-used assets to flesh them out because they don't have the budget to add more game to the game.

 

For example, KOTOR should have sub-titled 'The Running Jedi" because I spent as many hours running back-and-forth between areas on quests and questing and listening to dialogue.

 

Do A. Run back. Now go back there and do B. Run back. Now go back there and do C. Run back. Guess what! Go back there, again, and do D. Come back! Now run back and fight the boss.... Someone needed to give the Jedi Council a Day Planner or something... No wonder they were losing... They spent all their time running back and forth on sub-tasks instead of taking the list with them...

 

And DAII. The worst trash-game, milk-this-franchise to reused assets to for Corporate Cash Flow necessities since UBI soft tried to milk Might and Magic with MM8 and MM9...

 

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.

 

Sad because it's mostly true. It's like putting a disco ball in an empty warehouse and calling it a ballroom...

[Nerdwing]

And....what were you expecting?

 

 

You can't have an "impact" on the world if it's going to undercut someone else's opportunity to experience the same content. They're paying the same as you; why shouldn't they get to kill the same bosses as you?

 

 

Then people need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop pretending that this is exactly what they're doing. They're doing the same linear gather/fed-ex quests as previous MMO's have except with voice acting and sometimes your screen gets a red tint or blue depending on whether you want to do a laughably evil action or good one.

[Daeborn]

You're wrong overall and right on a small amount of quests. But do this. Create the same toon again and this time play him/her differently. Make your choices 180 deg different then tell me. There are also choices which affect your companion. Those too are choices.

 

There are differences.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Daeborn

[abishe]

You're wrong overall and right on a small amount of quests. But do this. Create the same toon again and this time play him/her differently. Make your choices 180 deg different then tell me. There are also choices which affect your companion. Those too are choices.

 

There are differences.

 

like the color crystal?, or haveing a light/dark side companion

[PatriciaHarlow]

Unless of course you're light side.

 

Going Light is the player choice. It is in no way forced upon you.

[Nerdwing]

Kaliyo threatened to kill me, directly, during the course of the IA storyline. Later on, she reappears and her threats are totally forgotten. You dont get a chance to mention it, and -GOD FORBID- tell her to get bent and leave your party or be shot.

 

But thankfully, it was all voice acted!