SWTOR feels more like a theme park than a world

[Kurnea]

I didn't say fetching water makes you appreciate tap more, although I'm sure that it would.

 

But having to fetch your own water would make you appreciate water itself more. You'd also probably use less of it.

 

Or to use another analogy, if you had to hunt your own food, then you would appreciate your food more too. It might even make it taste better (in your mind).

 

Having to work for things make the rewards all the sweeter. This isn't a difficult concept to grasp...

 

So based on that, modern conveniences are a bad thing? Should we get rid of our water facets so that we enjoy drinking more?

[Vis_Vires]

I didn't say fetching water makes you appreciate tap more, although I'm sure that it would.

 

But having to fetch your own water would make you appreciate water itself more. You'd also probably use less of it.

 

Or to use another analogy, if you had to hunt your own food, then you would appreciate your food more too. It might even make it taste better (in your mind).

 

Having to work for things make the rewards all the sweeter. This isn't a difficult concept to grasp...

 

Its kinda difficult to sum up in an analogy like that. Person a would appreciate the water more because he's had to work harder for it. Person b would appreciate the tap more because its saved him the work.

 

2 different types of gamers. Those who enjoy the grind, and the end rewards given to them from their grind. Others dont have the time/patience for the grind, but want to enjoy the rewards.

 

Its not a case of one being right or wrong. Some people play single player games from start to finish with godmode on. Whatever floats your boat.

 

I am enjoying SWTOR. Yes its a themepark. Yes its not exactly how I'd like it to be. Yes I'm subbed and will be for quite some time.

 

Theres plenty of things which NEED fixes, and plenty of things which MAY need fixes/tweaks. IMO the death penalty could do with looking at, but thats because of my gaming experiences over the years. Another gamer, with say, more wow-raid type experience, would probably want more end game content.

[TheSwamper]

I've been playing video games for over 3 decades.

 

I do NOT find hide and seek fun.

 

I do not find hard penalties fun, nor do they make the game more challenging. They just make it take longer.

 

I do not find waiting for 10 to 20 minutes while another teammate makes his way to a dungeon fun.

 

I have no desire to play in the kind of world the OP finds fun.

[Asavar]

Then don't play, because we don't care.

[Ganelon]

The reason why I'm complaining is to let Bioware know that there are still players like me that don't like theme park MMORPGs.

 

I'm pretty sure they know. As there are countless other companies that also know.

 

Companies that are putting out games like Darkfall, Earthrise, EVE, Fallen Earth, Mortal Online, Xsyon. Heck, even UO and EQ are still online. There are options for the players that, like you, prefer sandbox style MMOs.

 

And yet, on the board of every new MMO release we have posts like this fondly remembering the long lost quality of the MMO genre, claiming that back then in the golden age of MMORPGs things were so much better than they are now, hoping that the company developing said new game will suddenly realize the error of their ways and magically recapture the lost appeal of the genre.

 

Why do you feel the need to tell a company that has made the decision to produce a theme-park MMO, a company filled with people that design, code and test games for a living, produce art and stories for their games, that probably has dozens of people who have been playing and following the development of MMOs for longer than you and who are probably more passionate about the genre than any of us, that their most fundamental design decision about the game is wrong? Because you think they might not have realized that some people out there might possibly like sandbox MMOs? They know! And they also know that there is no way in hell a sandbox MMO could justify the investement they were prepared to make on SW:TOR (or any big IP, AAA quality game). Because the ROI for a game of this kind is much bigger. Because the amount of players they can expect to reach with a theme-park design is simply not comparable to the amount interest in a sandbox.

 

You want a sandbox? Fine, go look into any of the sandbox games that are available right now.

 

Me, I like theme-parks, stop trying to get sand all over them.

[Gestas]

This statement makes it hard to take you seriously, sir.

 

You can call me captain instead.

 

You assert that Vanilla WoW was the beginning of easier MMOs.

 

Yup.

 

You also assert no one who did not play EQ could know about a hard MMO because all they've played are the 'newer easier games.'

 

Yup.

 

You're essentially saying we don't know how to have the 'right kind of fun' because we don't want challenging games.

 

No, I'm saying the MMORPG genre used to be about fictional-based virtual worlds.

 

For instance, the AI in EQ, a game released in the 1990s, is more realistic than the AI used in WoW and SWTOR. In EQ, there wasn't some magical distance that you could run before mobs would magically forget that you existed, followed by them glitching out and being teleported back to their spawn points. If you pulled too many mobs in EQ, then you'd either feign death, run, teleport, or die. Further, mobs would remember the people that they ran past, so after you got away or died, they'd run after those people. Again, much more realistic.

 

But with realism comes responsibility, challenge, and even frustration. Things that Blizzard didn't like, so they dumbed down the AI when they made WoW; and the MMORPGs created afterward followed their lead.

 

Death Penalties are meant to be punishments for failure, and some people would prefer to limit the impact of their failure.

 

But when you "limit the impact of failure" there comes a point when failing doesn't mean anything; and if failing doesn't mean anything, then your accomplishments become less significant.

 

Some players like to purposely fail in these newer MMORPGs so they can get a free teleport.

[LarnDaruna]

So yeah, I'm a complete MMO n00b: I played on a friend's WoW account a couple of years into the game and SWTOR is my first real MMO. And I really don't get what all the complaining is about.

 

I dunno about you, but I find dying pretty annoying: mobs get their health back and you have to start over again. Your stuff takes a hit and has to be fixed. Not to mention that if you're with a group and you wipe, you have to get organized again. How is that not a suitable penalty?

 

Me? I have a job, a wife and a kid. I want to get home, spend some time with them, put the little one in bed and then play SWTOR. I figure I have about 8 hours of playing time a week. If this game had an XP penalty for dying, that would seriously put me off. If this game had grinding like WoW (I played enough WoW to hate the 'get 10 feathers' and not having them drop after having killed 34325 mobs), I would probably not play it.

 

But SWTOR has a TON of cool quests to do, an interesting storyline, cool RPG elements, crafting, appealing graphics (meaning that I can run the game on my Core 2 Duo 2,4 with a 8600 GTS, which is GOOD).

 

So like some others have said: if you don't like it, go play something else. But it's a dang fine game and a worthy successor to the KOTOR games.

[Barathos]

I kinda thought WoW was popular because it innovated a lot of things? You could actually SEE the quest giver (dunno bout DAoC, I think they actually had that), starting out didn't require your BFF to show you the ropes and where to go to buy/sell (the tunnel), crafting was good, and of course UI / Good feel of the game.

[TarikGur]

I respectfully disagree with some of your points.

 

I like quick travel, I like quick death penalty, I like dungeon finder.

You are right on what it may cause in a game...but I argue that *and agree with you on this point* devs can counter the negatives of these (ease of gameplay) features of the game by creating more detailed and expansive open-ended worlds.

 

I dont believe these ease of gameplay features need to be thrown out, there simply needs to be more content and slower leveling to off-balance these things.

 

I posted before release that I was worried with how quickly people would max level their characters, and I got bashed for it with (stop qq'ing, go back to WoW...etc...). The main arguement for quick max level is "End game content drives an mmo, everyone knows that!!!", which I strongly disagree with.

 

Not just slowing down xp, and creating open ended worlds, but I can spend a month just farming and selling things on ah, and not doing any xp grinding at all. I enjoy that, I dont have to be max level, as long as theres people to chat with and something to take up my time like resource farming then im happy and will pay a monthly fee. But theres is a COMPLETE lack of this in the game, its a total failure. The AH hurts this alot as well.

[Vis_Vires]

I've been playing video games for over 3 decades.

 

I do NOT find hide and seek fun.

 

I do not find hard penalties fun, nor do they make the game more challenging. They just make it take longer.

 

I do not find waiting for 10 to 20 minutes while another teammate makes his way to a dungeon fun.

 

I have no desire to play in the kind of world the OP finds fun.

 

 

But the OP does. And some years ago, I did. He's not necessailry bashing this game... more of recent MMO's in general.

 

MMO's have evolved massivley in the last 10 or so years, and while the majority of it has improved the popularity of what was a relativley niche market, i think to a degree, part of what made them popular in the first place has been lost.

 

Many of the features they had wouldnt be viable for todays gamers, or even old school gamers who grew tired of it. But imo, certain aspects of MMO's should go back to their roots, and, again IMO, the game(s) would be better for it.

[Gestas]

So yeah, I'm a complete MMO n00b: I played on a friend's WoW account a couple of years into the game and SWTOR is my first real MMO.

And I really don't get what all the complaining is about.

 

Uh-huh.

 

So like some others have said: if you don't like it, go play something else. But it's a dang fine game and a worthy successor to the KOTOR games.

 

I'm going to hang around since I did invest some money into the game already. I don't think it's a bad game, by the way.

[Goretzu]

EQ1 was pretty amazing (for its time), and even now it does a lot of things right which the games that copied it (i.e. WoW and all WoW-a-likes) don't do right.

 

 

But equally I don't think I'd necessarily play an EQ1 with better graphics now either.

 

 

As there were some seriously bad points to EQ1 (including both the death penalty and the ability to lose gear to some extent - never mind getting in to PvP - I don't think anything else, MMO-wise, has ever been as brutal as playing a melee toon on a full loot EQ1 PvP server - Exciting? Yes, but "exciting" like being chased by a tiger. Fun? Not so much, compared to say Warhammer Online PvP).

 

 

 

 

 

Having said that SWTOR has almost certainly gone too far the other way, it's difficult to see how they could have make it much easier or "lite" in many respects, and it certainly could do with some depth, at least occasional difficulty, and some "sandbox" elements.

 

People that say SWTOR is basically KOTOR 3 with 4 man online team up options aren't actually that far off the mark atm, that can't be a sustainable model for an MMO.

[CreamPoet]

I agree with the OP. SWTOR isn't perfect (by a long stretch) but I am enjoying it nonetheless for exactly what it is: a thempark MMO.

 

I knew this when I bought the game so I'm happy to live with it. For how long though, we'll have to see.

[Gestas]

I kinda thought WoW was popular because it innovated a lot of things? You could actually SEE the quest giver (dunno bout DAoC, I think they actually had that), starting out didn't require your BFF to show you the ropes and where to go to buy/sell (the tunnel), crafting was good, and of course UI / Good feel of the game.

 

As far as innovation goes, I think the only thing that WoW brought to the table that EQ didn't was smooth controls, a nice UI, and unique looking and working skills with little overlap. These were very important additions to the MMORPG genre.

[aimbotcfg]

See, you lost all credibility in your attempt to reply to my statement about not understanding the difference between accesability and challenge.

 

I'll make it easier for you, since you clearly don't understand and want to talk down to others to try and give the impression of some for of superiority.

 

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

 

In order to get x Item, you must do this SIMPLE, EASY, REPETATIVE task 7000 times.

 

This makes a game inaccesible, not challenging and dishes out loot based on TIME INVESTED. What you want.

 

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

 

In order to get x Item, you must complete this INTERSTING, DIFFICULT task 2 or 3 times.

 

This makes a game accesible, challenging and dishes out loot based on ABILITY. What I want.

 

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

 

Go kill Ikaruga on the hard setting of prototype mode without dieing, then come back and tell me EQ is 'challenging'.

[Aepervius]

 

 

Well, again, vanilla WoW was dumbed down, which made it more "user friendly."

 

Giving every character god-mode would also make the game more "user friendly."

 

 

 

 

Too much "user-friendliness" break the game making it no fun (it certainly seem to you) and not enough it break the fun too (it does for some of us).

 

Thus "user-friendliness"/easiness/fun it is a multidimensional surface curve with at least one local maximum, maybe more than one, and as far as I can tell it even vary among cultures. Subscriber MMO (FTP is a totally different beast) nowadays are simply navigating along that curve to try to maximize the population they get to subscribe.

 

Maybe you should consider that you belong to a minority for which the game "user-friendliness"/easiness/fun is simply way out of the normal average population settings.

They < BW > are in for a profit and maximizing population is a greater priority than catering to people which like difficulty.

 

Which is why although dark soul / demon soul were success because they were catering to such "hardcore" difficulties, they are niche game (demon soul AFAIR sold less than 1 million copy Worldwide over all those years). Maybe you should consider that you are much more niche than you realize.

 

Do not construe this as a critic, but as a remark. It is neither good nor bad nor intended to be.

[Vis_Vires]

But when you "limit the impact of failure" there comes a point when failing doesn't mean anything; and if failing doesn't mean anything, then your accomplishments become less significant.

 

 

Couldnt be put any better. But still, after what everyone has said, this isnt a hardcore MMO. So a hardcore death penalty wouldnt be suitable here. Something a little less forgiving than it is now, just not back to the days of corpse runs etc.

[Kurnea]

But the OP does. And some years ago, I did. He's not necessailry bashing this game... more of recent MMO's in general.

 

MMO's have evolved massivley in the last 10 or so years, and while the majority of it has improved the popularity of what was a relativley niche market, i think to a degree, part of what made them popular in the first place has been lost.

 

Lost? No, there are simply a lot more popular mmos that share space in the same genre. Seems to me there are still niche mmos. You have your korean grinders, you have your Indie MMOs, and you have stuff like Eve: Online.

 

Last I checked, if you hop on Eve:Online, get in a big, expensive capital ship and go exploring in low sec space all by your lonesome, you're liable to suffer some huge repercussions. Am I right?

 

Yes, the popular AAA mmos aren't like that. Answers simple: Don't play them, stick to the niche games that are directly targeting the niche crowd.

Many of the features they had wouldnt be viable for todays gamers, or even old school gamers who grew tired of it. But imo, certain aspects of MMO's should go back to their roots, and, again IMO, the game(s) would be better for it.

I have to ask, are the people who want those aspects actively looking at the mmo genre as a whole? Here's a list I found:

 

http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/mmolist.html

 

Can we say for sure that ALL of those games lack the aspects that old-school gamers want?

Edited January 13, 2012 by Kurnea

[Gestas]

See, you lost all credibility

 

I had credibility?

 

in your attempt to reply to my statement about not understanding the difference between accesability and challenge.

 

Like I wrote before, accessibility is a PR term used by many game developers to sugar coat changes to game play mechanics that serve to make games less challenging.

 

In order to get x Item, you must do this SIMPLE, EASY, REPETATIVE task 7000 times.

 

This makes a game inaccesible

 

Not necessarily. I wouldn't call that inaccessible because the task is easy; and if it's easy, then that means pretty much anyone could do it. But if having to do it 7,000 times translates to an amount of time that most wouldn't enjoy spending, then that would mean it's not very accessible.

 

However, if you compared killing a mob only 1 time before receiving an item to having to kill a mob 100 times before receiving an item, which would you say is more difficult? Surely, you wouldn't say they're equal in difficulty? I would say the latter is more difficult only because it takes more time.

 

Finally, an item that took 100 kills to receive would be worth more than the same item dropping only after 1 kill. For one, that would mean the former item is less common. And two, an item that takes 100 kills to receive would hold more sentimental value.

 

In order to get x Item, you must complete this INTERSTING, DIFFICULT task 2 or 3 times.

 

This makes a game accesible, challenging and dishes out loot based on ABILITY. What I want.

 

 

Actually, because the task is difficult, then that might make it less accessible, especially less accessible to children.

 

In any case, I'd take interesting and difficult tasks over repetitive and simple tasks any day. Do you know of any such tasks in WoW or SWTOR?

[Vis_Vires]

 

I have to ask, are the people who want those aspects actively looking at the mmo genre as a whole? Here's a list I found:

 

http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/mmolist.html

 

Can we say for sure that ALL of those games lack the aspects that old-school gamers want?

 

Probably not. But I have little to no interest in them. I'm a star wars fan, so this game would have to be pretty epicly terrible for me not to play it. I'm a lord of the rings fan, so likewise with LOTRO.

 

And like I said, its just my opinion. Certain things I miss, and would of liked to of seen in this game. They aren't in, probably never will be, but I'm still here playing, and will be until a game comes along, in a theme I enjoy, that ticks a few more boxes for me.

[SnoggyMack]

 

That being said, I can't believe how far the MMORPG genre has fallen since Everquest (EQ).

 

Everquest still exists, and is still chugging along if you care to keep playing it.

[thomaspraill]

I thought that might be part of the reason too, until I resubscribed to EQ and played on one of their new servers: Fippy Darkpaw.

 

I actually had more fun playing EQ than I did playing WoW for all those years, or SWTOR.

 

My dream is for there to be a new EQ-type game with the polish of WoW. EQ wasn't perfect though. For instance, the downtime was ridiculous. That was by far the biggest problem I had with EQ.

 

Dawntide looks promising. Although its more a UO-type game (sandbox). Open world, well thought out mechanics, actual penalties for death, and doesnt just give everyone everything for free.

[Gestas]

Dawntide looks promising. Although its more a UO-type game (sandbox). Open world, well thought out mechanics, actual penalties for death, and doesnt just give everyone everything for free.

 

Thanks. I'll look into it. I actually never played UO (unfortunately, because it looked awesome).

[Kurnea]

Probably not. But I have little to no interest in them. I'm a star wars fan, so this game would have to be pretty epicly terrible for me not to play it. I'm a lord of the rings fan, so likewise with LOTRO.

 

And like I said, its just my opinion. Certain things I miss, and would of liked to of seen in this game. They aren't in, probably never will be, but I'm still here playing, and will be until a game comes along, in a theme I enjoy, that ticks a few more boxes for me.

 

That's fine when you're talking just about this game, but for awhile it seemed like you were addressing the mmo genre as a whole. Seems kind of weird to talk about what modern mmos are missing and what's been lost when you admittedly haven't looked at most of what's out there.

[Endual]

I'm sure its been said but I don't really feel like reading through 8 pages of this...

 

I understand your feelings, some of the aspects you describe in EQ sound pretty fun and interesting to me, especially as someone who's grown pretty bored with this sort of game after too much WoW over the years. It sucks that you don't really care for this game's style, but I'm not sure there's much more to it than "this isn't the game for you".

Edited January 13, 2012 by Endual