I've figured out why i'm not enjoying the game

[Gleneagle]

I've been trying to figure out why such an originally addicting and fun game became a chore for me to play. It's the running.

 

Non-stop. Every time i do a sidequests, i have to run across a barren maze which is out of the way of my main objective to complete it. THEN, i have to run back. And then i get a new phase in which i have to run to another competley out of the way and on-the-other-side-of-the-map place.

...

 

So you bought the game just to bypass everything, get to the end as fast as possible, and then what? Moan about the lack of something new?

 

Stop and think a moment: Maybe you are going about your play as if it were a production line. Maybe there is something wrong with that.

 

Maybe there is more implied by L2P than the effete elites think? Maybe the game is in the 'how' for getting to fifty, instead of just becoming 50 ASAP?

Edited January 13, 2012 by Gleneagle

[rzrknight]

No kidding.....

 

And after paing 230k + creds for the next level vehicle speed I can't even tell the difference

 

That is because it is a 10% one : P

 

anyway , i understand ya ... just so much running , i agree with the people that kill themselves to run less.

[Shaz]

I think the only time I've felt the 'omg, so much RUNNING' is when I have to repeatedly go to my ship for some reason or another.... and I thus have to run through the awful, dead space stations. Even speeders wouldn't help in this case, though.

 

Speeders don't work in space stations anyway, and the space stations are so HUGE, and you sometimes have to go through more than one (like orbital stations). This doesn't make me feel like 'the world is big', it makes me feel like 'jeez, this is boring, and dead'. It feels too big, too oversized, because they are so bloody empty. These gigantic, EMPTY space stations, with perhaps a tiny scattering of totally immobile NPCs.

 

Boring. Empty. Huge. Dead. Sucks the life right out of me, even though it's all just perception. I have to trudge, on foot, through boring, empty, huge, dead space stations. Time and time again.

 

I don't know if making them smaller would be better, but they need...something. More NPCs. NPCs DOING things. Running around, fueling ships, hauling equipment, doing SOMETHING. Because, as it is, the space stations offer nothing but negativity.

 

Do something about the space stations.

 

And, one other thing, make speeders actually... speed. They're anything but 'speedy' right now.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Shaz

[Ecinev]

I've been trying to figure out why such an originally addicting and fun game became a chore for me to play. It's the running.

 

Non-stop. Every time i do a sidequests, i have to run across a barren maze which is out of the way of my main objective to complete it. THEN, i have to run back. And then i get a new phase in which i have to run to another competley out of the way and on-the-other-side-of-the-map place.

 

I have just realized now that when i log out, it's right after i get a side quest. I look at my map, and just like the previous 2 quests that i spent my last hour on, it is located at an unmapped zone that requires a non-exaggerated 10 minutes of running.

 

When i had the audacity to skip these time-sinks, i was severely under levelled for a story boss. It's just a waste of time. If you're going to force these repetitive side-quests and teeth-grindingly long runs that take you through nowhere land, at least put them on the road to your main objective, or put the objective marks somewhat close to eachother! Not on the other side of the map!

 

INB4: "This is what MMOs are about noob"; "The environments are amazing brah, why not run for 20 minutes on end?"; "Start grinding *****"

 

 

I hated this about the game too, and people that know I prefer Aion will say '' but hey you do that in Aion too!!!!''

 

I say its different as in Aion I'll run from 1 end of the world to another and I'll get into 4 *rewarded if won* fights ( REWARDS ZOMG), see 40-50+ people from my own race, find 50 more crafting materials to essencetap along the way and be able to get there usually from more than one linear direction.

[Cadiva]

EQ did not have mounts and we had to find a druid or wizard to port us between continents or end up running for an hour, wow seems small in comparison...

 

So true. Friend of mine made a fortune sitting at a zone wall offering teleports. I remember it once taking almost three hours to get back on a corpse run because we had to use the boats, the ones which had a habit of suddenly disappearing and dropping your character literally in the middle of nowhere.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Cadiva

[KittyPrawn]

All the side quests I've had have been in the same area as a main quest I'm doing. I've been kind of assuming that was the point of them - most of the time you end up completing them in the process of completing your main quests.

 

This was my experience, too. My quests are always clustered together, usually around where my class quest goes. The planets all seemed fairly linear. Sure, there's some running, but I've been running to a quest hub, getting all the quests, doing them, and turning them in. At that point, I move on to the next hub. There really hasn't been much inane running back and forth.

[Ashirae]

Running in WoW is 50x worse. I barely even notice it in this game. So no, it's not keeping me form enjoying the game.

[BeeblesTV]

Gamers have gotten lazy.

[Mrip]

As far as I can tell, the XP I get from a lot of quests is a reward for having to run across the entire map, through a maze, up a hill, through a gate, back down the hill because it was a dead end, back up a different hill, into a tunnel and back to the quest giver instead of any actual actions I had to perform once I got to the objective.

[Malsidius]

I couldn't agree more with this, the traveling in general in this game is HORRIBLY painful. Between the clear time sink distances between quest objectives and the massive amount of zoning, I easily spend more time staring blankly at the computer screen than I do actually playing.

 

This is leading to me not feeling the urge to log on as often, or when I am logged on, I feel the urge to log out.

[Gibmyster]

So you bought the game just to bypass everything, get to the end as fast as possible, and then what? Moan about the lack of something new?

 

Stop and think a moment: Maybe you are going about your play as if it were a production line. Maybe there is something wrong with that.

 

Maybe there is more implied by L2P than the effete elites think? Maybe the game is in the 'how' for getting to fifty, instead of just becoming 50 ASAP?

 

Oh my god. RUNNING is NOT a gameplay aspect!! Wanting to skip the CONSTANT running after the 30th sidequests is NOT skipping the game.

 

I want to do the sidequests!! Read my friggin post!! I don't care about godamn levelling. Levelling is just a necessity to continue the storyline for me.

 

The assumptions you people make, it is truly mind boggling.

 

I do not want to spend my game time running. That does not mean i want to rush the godamn game. It just mean i want to PLAY the game. PLAY THE GAME.

[ITSAmeee]

Gamers have gotten lazy.

 

You granpas have too many memories of the good ol' times.

 

Things are better now. Just saying

[Hautaaja]

Running in WoW is 50x worse. I barely even notice it in this game. So no, it's not keeping me form enjoying the game.

 

No. In WoW, there are multiple quest hubs in a zone with multiple(4-5 at least) simultaneous quests within a reasonable distance. They have even removed the travel between quest hubs so once you're done you can just auto-travel to the next hub.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Hautaaja

[ferroz]

Funny, what do you guys want then?

I'd like to be able to move around as fast as I did in EQ more than 10 years ago.

 

EQ did not have mounts and we had to find a druid or wizard to port us between continents or end up running for an hour, wow seems small in comparison...

Actually:

1. EQ did have mounts, from SoL.
   
2. EQ had speed buffs starting at level 5,
   
3. EQ had persistent speed buffs castable starting at level 9 that you could get cast on you at level 1
   
4. EQ had clickie items that provided speed buffs, wearable at level 1.
   
5. There were way of teleporting, even for non-casters (The OT hammer, for example)
   

 

Really, it was faster for me to run from freeport all the way to the assassin's camp in lower guk than it is to get around some of these planets, and it's not really that they actually seem bigger, it's just that we move around in molasses in tor. So EQ is a terrible counter example.

[Drakos]

I understand how you feel.

 

It's less the fact that I have to run, and more that I'm finding that the <Bonus Quest!> concept, while good and fine initially became annoying quickly once I began wandering into Area4 and Heroic4 Quests that would literally extend their lifetimes by half-hours or longer because of them. The "Surprise! You're not done yet" quality of questing has its ups and downs. For me, I learned to live with it, but I can certainly see how annoying it is for some.

[Megyskermike]

I noticed this immediately after getting my speeder, all the planets are big just for the sake of being big (and having a speeder). I think it's just because swtor gives the feel of a single player rpg, yet it has many mmo elements... it just ends up feeling a bit disjointed at times. Not a bad game/experience, it just seems like it's not sure what it wants to be at times.

[Hautaaja]

You granpas have too many memories of the good ol' times.

 

Things are better now. Just saying

 

It has become easier. Faster. More efficient. More fun? I don't know. I started my MMO career in UO and, while I didn't know any better, I feel that I enjoyed the randomness of it all more. It could of course be the "first love" syndrome.

 

Sure, it took more effort to understand what the game is about and what you're supposed to do. Playing the game was pointless if you didn't have friends or didn't make friends quickly. It was extremely punishing if you didn't know how to build a character. But in the end the experience was more satisfying. When you managed to down that monstrous, piece of crap world boss that required a few friends with you, it made you feel extremely good. Then you found out that there were world bosses that in some cases required co-operation between different guilds it blew your mind. Then after you managed to get all that über gear some PK guild managed to track you down, jumped you and you lost your best gear. And the only one you could blame was yourself for not taking precautions, not being careful enough. It was difficult, it was frustrating, but it was more satisfying as well. Would I still like it after 6 years of Theme Park? I don't know, and I wish someone comes up with a new, modern sandbox formula.

[darthrevo]

Me too. that pretty much reason number 1 why i dont want to sub.

 

The running around is killing my desire to play. I know to a degree its inevitable but you feel like you are making a spider's web on the map. really could have been made much more linear in terms of moving across the maps. i still want to see and go everywhere, i just dont want to do it 100 times.

 

wow was very similar, maybe worse in many ways. plenty of other games have started to move away from it but TOR brought be slap back into 'cross country online'.

 

its mostly a way to artificially increase the time it takes to do anything.

[SnoggyMack]

I'd like to be able to move around as fast as I did in EQ more than 10 years ago.

 

Actually:

1. EQ did have mounts, from SoL.
   
2. EQ had speed buffs starting at level 5,
   
3. EQ had persistent speed buffs castable starting at level 9 that you could get cast on you at level 1
   
4. EQ had clickie items that provided speed buffs, wearable at level 1.
   
5. There were way of teleporting, even for non-casters (The OT hammer, for example)
   

 

Really, it was faster for me to run from freeport all the way to the assassin's camp in lower guk than it is to get around some of these planets, and it's not really that they actually seem bigger, it's just that we move around in molasses in tor. So EQ is a terrible counter example.

 

Ouch, you're really bending the timeline there. Shadows of Luclin was their THIRD expansion. It took them that long to integrate mounts into the game. And when they did, they were super expensive and only really for the players already sitting at end-game.

 

The OT Hammer was not something new players got for use.

 

Spirit of Wolf buffs were what people used. And initially it was something you either got from a friend or paid a druid or ranger to cast on you. Travel was very cumbersome in that game for a good long time.

[LordSatoh]

You are all right.

Why move at all tbh??!!

 

Make all quests on space station and you will be awesome! No more running!

 

 

 

[Snobbenunge]

It wouldn't be so bad if the environments were more interesting, I loved Skyrim and spent 160 hours just exploring the massive landscapes, mountains and dungeons. I enjoyed every minute of it and never found it one bit tedious, but for some reason I find travelling in SWTOR to be tedious.

 

To me the issue isn't travelling in itself, just how boring it is now. I also enjoyed travel in Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft in each of their early years because the worlds felt as if they had some life in them. Granted looking back at EQ now, it is horrendously ugly, though back then it was still a lot of fun, especially during Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious and Shadows of Luclin.

 

So I hope they can give more reasons to explore than to get a datacron or kill X mobs marked on your map.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Snobbenunge

[pocketthesaurus]

Running? IN AN MMO? WHAT!?

[Scar]

Something that could help this is making a lot more hand ins (and subsequent legs on the quest line) available via holo-calls.

[Malchoir]

Agree....

 

What makes it worse is the obnoxious sound effect of my footsteps.....that seems to be louder than all the ambiance of the world around me....

 

Seriously whoever did that sound effect, is horrible.....all I hear in game is the sound of me running through an indoor basketball court.

[Dymensia]

If they removed the cooldown on quick travel I'd be really happy. It would make getting to a rested area, going to the jump off for a mission point, and getting back to turn in those missions after going out and completing them less tedious.

 

I don't mind fighting my way through enemies to get to an objective (I actually like it), but fighting my way back through the same enemies because they "respawn" is just annoying. I don't mind traveling and exploring to unlock the quick travel option the first time. It's just repetition of the same travel that gets long.