Is has potential, but too many features are missing

[Dianoia]

If I played games for features and not to have fun, I would probably agree with you.

 

I think this game is incredibly fun, even without the laundry list of features OP thinks are utterly necessary.

[siza]

Fun for the first month. Then spend time with what?

PvE and PvP ultra repetitive waiting for a patch and the next?

The game as the novices mmorpg players can't see it is poor in content.

Very poor.

Among all the games for sale there are decent mmorpg and mmorpg exceptional.

 

SWTOR is decent. It has very good foundations. But must be developed quickly and in the right direction. The directions recommended by users. Users who recommended for the good of the product. And not those who criticize the opinions of others without elaborating or justifying reasons.

[Zeppelin]

aka I want this game to be a sandbox, but it isn't.

[RazielHex]

Dead world

 

Zones are made the way they are so more than top end PCs can render them. You think the 18 year old playing on his parents Hewlette Packard they got in 2003 running XP is going to be able to render HUNDREDS of sprites and textures of skyscrapers? You think the single world server is going to be able to process that much of a graphical load if there are hundreds of players all around the place? Do you think there might be some hardware limitations that could cause degradation of data transfer because of it, let alone how much bigger transferring all those extra graphic textures the size of the client alone will get?

 

Who is this "we" you are speaking for in paragraph 3? It's certainly not the main playerbase, who though MMO after MMO demand centralized locations for basic needs in order to streamline the commerce process. They *are* in fact, in a hurry, and the developers of modern games sympathize with this thoughts because the quest hub should be a hub. You should get what you need and be out the door and back to your questing. It's just another client-server process in action.

 

 

Exploration

 

The planets expand as you progress, and you really feel it in the Nar Shaddaa bonus series in InfoSec and NetSec, and by the time you get to Alderaan, it's huge landscape after huge landscape. There is reward in exploration, they're called Datacrons. That incites people to explore to discover these rare objects. Most are fairly well hidden. If you have such a knack for exploring, search for them *without a guide.*

 

 

Day/night cycle

 

This is very unimportant and affects nothing. Tell me how you use *actual data* on a *fictional world*? Where's this database that has astronomical data recorded on Tatooine, or any data on a world that is a binomial star system? It doesn't exist, man. The closest thing you've got is that Vin Deisel movie "Pitch Black" and that planet was in a Trinomial Star system and had one night every year. According to most astronomical surveys, Binomial star systems are much more common than single-star systems, like the Solar system we currently reside in, but finding planets in inter-galactic star system is still fleshing itself out to be a hard science. It's more about luck in finding shadows that move. All you want in this is flavor to a sundae, ignoring the fact that the sundae itself is delicious.

 

 

Dynamic weather

 

Yet again, purely flavor, though Dromuud Kaas does have tempermental rainstorms. It's such a small thing that people will clam for at start and never again talk about and ruthlessly ignore once it's implemented.

 

Environment interaction, social activites & RP

 

I consider myself rather progressive in terms of roleplaying to the point I feel cantinas are a crutch for the uncreative and uninspired; a legacy from IRC text-based systems and a banshee of the past from D&D that won't stop wailing on the psyche. I create my own social activities, and organize events for roleplaying and in-character interactions for a guild of about sixty individuals.

 

Do you know why you can't sit in every chair? Because chairs are tied to the cover system of IA and Smugglers. Try the one on your ship and watch your top bar change. The way to fix that is for them to individually code every single chair for you to sit on because they can't omit that link for those two base classes as it is integral to their playstyle. It's quite a hassle, and if it means that much to you, you will be patient to let their one engineer do this extremely tedious job until it's done, as it's far from priority.

 

As for betting? You might as well drop that idea. No game since EverQuest has allowed gambling inside it, and for good reason too. You won't see playermade lotteries or casino-type gameplay here at all. If you want to bet, put your companion on a rich mission and hope that you'll get something legendary out of it. That's the closest you'll come to this idea.

 

You can climb, you really can. You ever get that datacron in Nar Shaddaa that required jumping on all those boxes in the Coreillian sector? Or the one in NetSec that you needed the Datacard from the incinerator room for? There's three others in Taris just like it. You can save yourself 10,000 credits on an MGGS by jumping creatively along the dam in Alderaan. The environment is there, for sure, that allows for uninhibited exploration. Sometimes you just gotta look up instead of out.

 

I hereby claim that any sentence which includes "gungan" and "great moment" without the addition of "death" is false.

 

 

PvP

 

It is possible on Alderaan, Taris, Hoth, Voss, Belsavis, Nar Shaddaa, Ilium, Tatooine, and so on. Your argument that a planet has a "level range" is both faulty and uninformed. There is a reason that starter planets were off-limits. It was to prevent end-level players from causing unnecessary grief. This game has been developed that by the time you are exposed to Open PvP areas, you should be in your mid-20's, have most of your core skills, and be well on your way to showing specialization in your specified tree. In so many words, you should be competant enough to be able to defend yourself. That's goddamned ingenious, and you find it restrictive that you're suddenly prohibited from flyin' your little starship on an enemy planet that's so goddamned protected by hundreds of squadrons of fighters and dozens of capital ships because you want to take your artifact lightsaber and strike down younglings. That's not what this game is about, and killing endlessly spawning faction leaders isn't either, because it circumvents the story (Darth Malgus excluded).

 

In summary, get over it. There's plenty of places to go and people to kill if you're so inclined. You want a big battle? ADVERTISE and ORGANIZE one using some administrative acumen with those shiny new server subforums you have. If you can't put forth the effort you don't deserve the reward.

 

Space & vehicle

 

I enjoy the space missions. It's a great amount of fluff and it earns me a good handful of credits. If you want a flight simulation, play a flight simulator. This is an MMO, and the space missions server as side-quests. They weren't even in the foundations of development until the outcry of the beta community to fulfill some niche in some people's playstyle, so the fact that they exist at all is something of a miracle. But because Bioware has given you an inch, you ask for a mile, and this self-entitled attitude is sickening. If you want to take a ship, float in the middle of empty space, and get a good feeling of the enormous distance that space is, there's an MMO for you, it's called EVE online. This isn't that, nor should it be.

 

Your vehicle suggestions I find are ultimately silly. There's no reason for anything you've suggested besides extra work for little to no payoff. The vehicles are fine, with there being many options for it. THe speed "bonus" is plenty, and is not so much that you would feel absolutely worthless if you don't immediately have the level 3 speeder vice your level 2. There's no reason to have leftover sprites or graphics of a non-persistant ability that is, for all intents and purposes of programming, a toggled buff.

 

Interface & graphics

 

This is yet another point where you show you are uninformed (you have 4 bars, not 2). The UI is getting the same tools from WarHammer that the Mythic developers had near mastered in terms of customizing the default set since they're in Bioware now. Expect that in March along with Guild Banks. Hell, they just put out a video on it this weekend.

 

As for chat bubbles, there was a summit back in the late summer where it was brought up. They are on a priority list, but they're not high on it. There's so little impact that they bring because you're basically looking at one thing instead of the other. The words are still there in your window. I advise you to work with the bountiful amount of tools that you have in setting up a custom chat window and filter out everything but spatial channels so you can more rightly envision who you are by. Every person I know has done this in order to better facilitate roleplaying and in-character interactions and fully approves of this tried and true method. Stop being lazy.

 

Character

 

There is no lack of races. The development standpoint, backed by LucasArts has been that human, and near-human races, are always the protagonists of star wars, not the strikingly alien ones and droids. Those are supplementary characters and support the role of the main protagonist, which is the role of the player in these class stories. As such, you would need to include the races of all companion characters, to include wookies, togruta, talz, jawa, devaronian, deshade, droids, houk, trandoshan, mon cal, weequay, chagrian, cathar, gand, sarkhai, and kaleesh. Quite a lot of diversity, don'cha think? Yet again, this comes off as entitlement, just like the 'wads in the summer were with, "The races are fine, but why isn't *my* favorite race included?" Just get over it, there's solid reasons behind this, and the legacy system has already shown to increase racial choices in the core classes (e.g., Miraluka Sith Warrior).

 

The fact you're asking for FPS mechanics in an MMORPG is both laughable and obtuse. A game did try that once, it was called Tabula Rasa. That turd was dropped on some poor development company's lap by Lord British before he flew off into space. The cover system is only for the IA and smuggler classes. It is a core playstyle mechanic developed for them only. To share it with other classes cheapens it's affect and is basically becomes an unnatural way to use basic line of sight defenses against ranged classes. It's simply not to be shared, and to implement an FPS-type mechanic into this MMO would be a horribly devastating thing in how it would change the mechanics of every single class and every single encounter. It's a bad idea.

 

The personal jetpacks for bounty hunters are meant for short bursts of speed or thrust. They're not *travelling* jetpacks. Bounty Hunters aren't the rocketeer. They're not Commander Cody (the old Sci-Fi serial, not the dude from Clone Wars). It's based fully on Boba/Jango Fetts' rocketpack, which allows him short bursts of elevation and mobility, and the bounty hunter gains abilities that emphasize the jet pack's prowess.

 

You won't start over? It's been a month. This game will operate for years. You won't start over? Lord almighty...

 

Guild

 

The standard prose about this bad ideas is that private, instanced areas take players out of the planets and out of the fleet. It turns a highly populated centralized area of commerce and communication from the server's faction into a deadzone, which you yourself were rallying against! They turn the game into a lobby, which is what WarCraft has become and games like DDO were developed around, where you sit and wait with no one around you until the system assigns you what you want to do. They don't incite socialization, they create a divergance to it and sever it due to severing the playerbase from itself.

 

"Having a guild is a permanent group chat"? wow. Your guild sucks. Mine has an entire backstory. We have diplomatic ties with other guilds. We have an entire storyline with a sister republic guild. We have events and an in-character player bounty system that pays members thousands for specific hits and marks we put out. We have social occassions both formal and informal. We have assigned roles and collateral duties and a fully functional chain of command for prople so they know who to go to in order to meet an expert to handle any situation that might come up. We have a class guide system in place, a craftsman expert system in place. We have all these tools to help our members be better and ensure they have fun playing the game they purchased, and all your guild is good for is "Group chat"? Your guild sucks.

 

Endgame

 

This is more of you wanting the development team to make you stop being lazy and for them to do your work. IF you want to organize something, organize it. Operations, Hard-Mode Flashpoints, Warzones, and RvR are the basic tenets, but there's finishing your class quest, finding datacrons, finding codex entries, uncovering all explorables in every planet, doing all the bonus series' quests, meeting people. You've given this content, but if you don't want to do it, it's not Bioware's fault. There's 7 other storylines you can do. If you manage to finish all eight with all content done, then you can complain that there's nothing to do.

 

Housing

 

It useless fluff and wasted resources on something that will be completely unused once the novelty wears off and made into a character bank, plenty of which exist, and a private, instanced lobby, which is the antithesis to the MMO landscape that Bioware intends to cultivate. Player cities were graveyards in SWG, they were grave*stones* in UO. This is not a sandbox game. You need to get over that.

 

Funny how me telling you to "get over it" is starting to be like a little motto.

 

 

Crafting

 

Crafting is fine. It's easy. Random is fair.

 

Get over it.

 

Conclusion

 

This isn't Galaxies.

 

This isn't WarCraft.

 

This isn't EVE.

 

Get over it.

[siza]

Please don't text wall.

Get over it? No thanks. We do not know how the product will evolve. But at least many of us present their ideas. Strangely all our ideas are the same and they cames simultanesly.

I remember that BioWare promised to take strong opinion of user requirements.

I want to believe. Please do not criticize, but help build a better product. Do not criticize our ideas, but deepen your understanding and make it your own.

If for you the product is perfect as it is...I do not know precisely what MMORPG you've played so far.

[Daedricshots]

1. You act like nothing will ever be added or changed in the game. Its not static mmo's evolve.

2. Player housing = NO. Go outside stop living in a fantasty world.

[knightblaster]

It isn't a sandbox game and never will be one. Not what BioWare is about. BioWare is about them telling you the story, and you participating in their story. Not about you making up your own content and story.

 

SWG was a long time ago in a gaming industry far, far away. Sandbox ideas are a niche market. EVE satisfies it, for the most part. A BioWare game is not going to be a sandbox.

[siza]

Another interesting idea that is talked about in the guild was about the space battles.

Many have defined the unnecessary and repetitive but I think we could make it more influential on the gameplay.

You could not make space battles influential on the gameplay of some of the planets?

For example, obtaining areas, outposts and bonuses for all players who participate in the battle.

[pizzabrad]

You forget, alot of people's computers can't handle all of this.

[Chromiie]

I'll criticize any idea I believe is wrong and answer with a full point-by-point rebuttal. I have the right to do that to prove that it's incorrect or flawed.

 

Everything you say is wrong because it's different from my opinion.

[RazielHex]

Everything you say is wrong because it's different from my opinion.

 

[Citation Needed]

[Katrar]

TOR burned its potential over the past few years. It will never be the game it could have been. Wish lists for TOR are simply wishful thinking. That said, a game that combined solid pve/pvp mechanics with the atmospheric things OP listed would be amazing.

[RazorStone]

The Original post made here is good and I think its important to point out, while all his ideas may not be feasible or necessary, such as the night/day. The spirit of his argument is true. I come from the Runescape-school of mmos. I've never actually played WoW before and this is my first experience with a big mmo like this. And compared to runescape, this has a lot less things to keep you busy or entertained.

 

In runescape, you could fish, cut wood, make fires, mine stuff, make your own armor and weapons and do a bunch of other stupid stuff. Now, dont get me wrong, I dont want to see all those skills put in this game, however, in swtor, what can u do? Basically, u got combat, more combat, questing, space comabt and yea, crew skils...Now, i love combat and doing quests and etc. However, other than space combat, there really is a serious lack of things to keep players "distracted."

 

This game is far too linear. My suggestions On top of op's are to add more game play mechancis such as puzzling. Perhaps, more caves and dungeons could involve solving riddles and puzzles and maybe have no combat at all! Also, I would suggest creating some "player skills" this could involve our characters being more involved in the skill system and it could be something only they could do.

Also, something this game could borrow from runescape, how about some random events? THey've already created a great backstory for our characters, Why not include more consequences for the actions we've taken? Why not include a event where pehaps we get taken to Jail for deeds we committed and we have to break out.., or some disgruntled person randomly attacking us? or perhaps a special quest or puzzle given to us for saving some person.

 

Also, another problem that just came to mind, why must every quest seem so heroic and epic? Why not include more comedic quests? I know in skyrim, there were quests where you could help out a quarreling couple? Why not add some more humanity to this game? WHy cant we just take some time out to help a some girl kill her cheating boyfriend?

 

In short, while they have made a great foundation of a game here, thats all they really have here, is a great foundation. There needs to be more things to distract the "players."

And it wouldn't be a bad thing to borrow elements from other games and genres, including their own, such as mass effect!

[RazielHex]

In runescape, you could fish, cut wood, make fires, mine stuff, make your own armor and weapons and do a bunch of other stupid stuff. Now, dont get me wrong, I dont want to see all those skills put in this game, however, in swtor, what can u do? Basically, u got combat, more combat, questing, space comabt and yea, crew skils...Now, i love combat and doing quests and etc. However, other than space combat, there really is a serious lack of things to keep players "distracted."

 

..........................

 

Also, another problem that just came to mind, why must every quest seem so heroic and epic? Why not include more comedic quests? I know in skyrim, there were quests where you could help out a quarreling couple? Why not add some more humanity to this game? WHy cant we just take some time out to help a some girl kill her cheating boyfriend?

 

You like sandbox games. This isn't one of them. It will never be. Sandbox games don't have clear, incisive storylines because the onus is on the playerbase to create that.

 

Also, I failed to watch that scene in star wars where, as part of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Trials in Dagobah, he had to fetch toilet paper because Yoda had the runs that day. Maybe it's the Space Opera of Star Wars that could possibly be the reason that such "comedy quests" aren't included? Yes? Could that be it?

[orion_eb]

I would have loved to see just about everything listed in the original post but I know and you know that 99% of it will never see the light of day in this game. Papers could be written on the pure wasted potential this game had and didn't implement...too bad the years (and money) of voice development couldn't have been used to create a living expanded universe instead.

 

I like the game and I'm going to keep playing. That doesn't mean I'm not going to drop it immediately after another game comes out that actually has features of a 2012 MMO. You know the comparisons to WoW of 2004 are valid and this game would kick WoW's butt...in 2004. Too bad they took an extra 7 years to release it while not bothering with just about any advancement seen in more recent MMOs since then (excluding the voice work for everything which is the sole redeeming point).

 

I'm still hopeful though that some major changes and additions will make it to the game in the coming months. We never know what was 90% done but not added due to time constraints or bugs that can be easily finished and released. I'll leave it at disappointed but hopeful.

[Krafen]

Features like those described by the OP would certainly have added immersion to the game and given us a more interesting game after playing through the class storyline. Unfortunately, what we got instead was voiced cut scenes.

 

Apparently, the effort and money that could have gone to making a great game went to the "innovation" of voice-over paired with a mediocre game.

[decampo]

The OP does make some good valid points in my opinion.

 

The dead world feel is particularly starting to bother me and with my BH now being L48 and questing in Corellia, it's probably the killing blow for me personally. It's just so lifeless and dull no amount of story or voice acting can bring that place to life. It's not like it's the only lifeless world too because many other zones feel like this and are just not fun for me personally. It's not just the lifeless feel though, it's also the design of the worlds.

 

Opinions are obviously subjective and I realize others may like these zones and enjoy the questing but few could argue against them feeling lifeless. I never expected to feel like this after one months play and am quite gutted to be honest as I've been following this game since it was first announced and was expecting it to be more exciting and vibrant.

 

No doubt it will get better and improve quite a bit over time, I just don't think it's going to improve enough for me to remain interested.

Edited January 22, 2012 by decampo

[Dreossk]

Basically everything the op mentioned would do nothing for me, those aren't the features the game needs, besides, the majority of them, are like new content entirely.

 

This game is currently missing the tools necessary to enjoy its current content, bw should focus on functionality before adding more stuff.

 

As said multiple times, they have two teams, so they can fix bugs and add content at the same time. The team that add content will make players decide if the game is worth 15$ a month depending of the frequency of their updates.

 

OP, these are all great additions to the game to be added eventually. However I do think you're asking too much from a game that has only been out for a month. Some of these will be added eventually. Can't you be happy that they are rolling out content patches so fast? In WoW it's like once per 8 months.

 

Problem with that logic is that other games offer many of these features right now, games that have been out for years. 10 years ago it was no problem to release a game with so little content but today with the dozens of games in the market, you must release something with meat and multiple kind of activities to do to keep all players interested.

 

Day Night cycle will be pretty hard for each planet. Each plannet has different cycles.

 

and pointless. people always complain about dark. they don't dark. true night can't be achieved because they want convenience and daytime visibility

 

it's why night in other games means an offwhite sky with white stars. it doesn't look/feel like night

 

people don't want night, weather stresses their rig so that means you have fewer people paying, etc

 

I pre-refuted all these arguments in my main post because I knew people would bring them out again.

 

I want to play the game as intended. Yes I want to raid, yes I want to pvp, and yes I want to hang out with friends. I'm sorry, but it looks like you wanted a different game. RP to your crazy heads fall off, but almost none of the "features" on that list are anywhere approaching "needed".

 

If I played games for features and not to have fun, I would probably agree with you.

 

I think this game is incredibly fun, even without the laundry list of features OP thinks are utterly necessary.

 

What you have to understand is that you are not alone in the world and if they want to keep more people in than raiders, they'll have to add something else.

 

aka I want this game to be a sandbox, but it isn't.

 

Aka I want features other than fighting all the time and they'll have to add them if they respect the fans.

 

Zones are made the way they are so more than top end PCs can render them. You think the 18 year old playing on his parents Hewlette Packard they got in 2003 running XP is going to be able to render HUNDREDS of sprites and textures of skyscrapers? You think the single world server is going to be able to process that much of a graphical load if there are hundreds of players all around the place? Do you think there might be some hardware limitations that could cause degradation of data transfer because of it, let alone how much bigger transferring all those extra graphic textures the size of the client alone will get?

 

They can scale performance and there are precedents in games that are older and require a computer less powerful than SWTOR so that pretty much settles it.

 

The planets expand as you progress, and you really feel it in the Nar Shaddaa bonus series in InfoSec and NetSec, and by the time you get to Alderaan, it's huge landscape after huge landscape. There is reward in exploration, they're called Datacrons. That incites people to explore to discover these rare objects. Most are fairly well hidden. If you have such a knack for exploring, search for them *without a guide.*

 

The bonus section of Nar Shaddaa is a mess of disjointed zones and poor level design. Datacrons are nice, I have most of them, but that doesn't change the fact that the world design sometimes doesn't make any sense and that it couldn't exist in that form.

 

This is very unimportant and affects nothing. Tell me how you use *actual data* on a *fictional world*? Where's this database that has astronomical data recorded on Tatooine, or any data on a world that is a binomial star system? It doesn't exist, man. The closest thing you've got is that Vin Deisel movie "Pitch Black" and that planet was in a Trinomial Star system and had one night every year. According to most astronomical surveys, Binomial star systems are much more common than single-star systems, like the Solar system we currently reside in, but finding planets in inter-galactic star system is still fleshing itself out to be a hard science. It's more about luck in finding shadows that move. All you want in this is flavor to a sundae, ignoring the fact that the sundae itself is delicious.

 

All the information are available for all planets and they were posted in multiple iteration of the day/night topic.

 

Yet again, purely flavor, though Dromuud Kaas does have tempermental rainstorms. It's such a small thing that people will clam for at start and never again talk about and ruthlessly ignore once it's implemented.

 

And yet it's the kind of thing that gives life and immersion to the world and what makes it's memorable.

 

I consider myself rather progressive in terms of roleplaying to the point I feel cantinas are a crutch for the uncreative and uninspired; a legacy from IRC text-based systems and a banshee of the past from D&D that won't stop wailing on the psyche. I create my own social activities, and organize events for roleplaying and in-character interactions for a guild of about sixty individuals.

 

I'll pass on the cantina part because I agree that there is not much potential in that but for the rest, we still need RP tools and the possibility to alter the world if we want real complex events like in old times.

 

Do you know why you can't sit in every chair? Because chairs are tied to the cover system of IA and Smugglers. Try the one on your ship and watch your top bar change. The way to fix that is for them to individually code every single chair for you to sit on because they can't omit that link for those two base classes as it is integral to their playstyle. It's quite a hassle, and if it means that much to you, you will be patient to let their one engineer do this extremely tedious job until it's done, as it's far from priority.

 

If their engine seriously can't do that in batch, I think we have a bigger problem here for the future of the game.

 

As for betting? You might as well drop that idea. No game since EverQuest has allowed gambling inside it, and for good reason too. You won't see playermade lotteries or casino-type gameplay here at all. If you want to bet, put your companion on a rich mission and hope that you'll get something legendary out of it. That's the closest you'll come to this idea.

 

Lottery was present in other game than EQ like SWG and even LotRO. There was a casino in Mass Effect, sure it was laughable but it was there and we could play. There is a big one on Nar Shaddaa and it's completely empty of life and details and we can't do anything in it, it would be a good place to start.

 

You can climb, you really can. You ever get that datacron in Nar Shaddaa that required jumping on all those boxes in the Coreillian sector? Or the one in NetSec that you needed the Datacard from the incinerator room for? There's three others in Taris just like it. You can save yourself 10,000 credits on an MGGS by jumping creatively along the dam in Alderaan. The environment is there, for sure, that allows for uninhibited exploration. Sometimes you just gotta look up instead of out.

 

I'm talking about climbing, not jumping, I know I should have said it better from the start, sorry.

 

It is possible on Alderaan, Taris, Hoth, Voss, Belsavis, Nar Shaddaa, Ilium, Tatooine, and so on. Your argument that a planet has a "level range" is both faulty and uninformed. There is a reason that starter planets were off-limits. It was to prevent end-level players from causing unnecessary grief. This game has been developed that by the time you are exposed to Open PvP areas, you should be in your mid-20's, have most of your core skills, and be well on your way to showing specialization in your specified tree. In so many words, you should be competant enough to be able to defend yourself. That's gosh darned ingenious, and you find it restrictive that you're suddenly prohibited from flyin' your little starship on an enemy planet that's so gosh darned protected by hundreds of squadrons of fighters and dozens of capital ships because you want to take your artifact lightsaber and strike down younglings. That's not what this game is about, and killing endlessly spawning faction leaders isn't either, because it circumvents the story (Darth Malgus excluded).

 

In summary, get over it. There's plenty of places to go and people to kill if you're so inclined. You want a big battle? ADVERTISE and ORGANIZE one using some administrative acumen with those shiny new server subforums you have. If you can't put forth the effort you don't deserve the reward.

 

The problem is the simple fact that we'll never be able to say "Remember that big battle on Korriban with 200 players? It was epic" or "We went to Coruscant and held the senate for hours". Iconic planets and yet, nothing great will happen with them for the rest of the game. As for organizing events on accessible and lower level planet, that would just be an insult to players that are trying to play and have no chance to fight back and everyone would hate you. Not a good idea to try that. "Organizing" a surprise attack with the other faction isn't really great.

 

I enjoy the space missions. It's a great amount of fluff and it earns me a good handful of credits. If you want a flight simulation, play a flight simulator. This is an MMO, and the space missions server as side-quests. They weren't even in the foundations of development until the outcry of the beta community to fulfill some niche in some people's playstyle, so the fact that they exist at all is something of a miracle. But because Bioware has given you an inch, you ask for a mile, and this self-entitled attitude is sickening. If you want to take a ship, float in the middle of empty space, and get a good feeling of the enormous distance that space is, there's an MMO for you, it's called EVE online. This isn't that, nor should it be.

 

There was a great flight simulator in the previous game and it's one of the main part of Star Wars. I asked for better even before they said it would be in. I'm of these people that expect an improvement in games, not a regression. And don't say to people to go in another game, this is the only Star Wars MMO and that represents a lot in the life of many people.

 

Your vehicle suggestions I find are ultimately silly. There's no reason for anything you've suggested besides extra work for little to no payoff. The vehicles are fine, with there being many options for it. THe speed "bonus" is plenty, and is not so much that you would feel absolutely worthless if you don't immediately have the level 3 speeder vice your level 2. There's no reason to have leftover sprites or graphics of a non-persistant ability that is, for all intents and purposes of programming, a toggled buff.

 

I see that dumbed down features and mediocrity is becoming the standard since games like WoW. It's a shame that people or not more interested in living a real Star Wars experience, well it's not a shame, they can do that if they want but it's a shame they insult other and want to force them to play like them.

 

This is yet another point where you show you are uninformed (you have 4 bars, not 2). The UI is getting the same tools from WarHammer that the Mythic developers had near mastered in terms of customizing the default set since they're in Bioware now. Expect that in March along with Guild Banks. Hell, they just put out a video on it this weekend.

 

I did a lot for this game in the last 3 years, don't tell me I'm uninformed. I never said we have 2 bars, I was talking about the windows, or the panels if you prefer. The ones called by the buttons on the top menu.

 

As for chat bubbles, there was a summit back in the late summer where it was brought up. They are on a priority list, but they're not high on it. There's so little impact that they bring because you're basically looking at one thing instead of the other. The words are still there in your window. I advise you to work with the bountiful amount of tools that you have in setting up a custom chat window and filter out everything but spatial channels so you can more rightly envision who you are by. Every person I know has done this in order to better facilitate roleplaying and in-character interactions and fully approves of this tried and true method. Stop being lazy.

 

I have 4 different custom chat windows since day 1. As for laziness, I think the devs would need to look at themselves long before the players.

 

There is no lack of races. The development standpoint, backed by LucasArts has been that human, and near-human races, are always the protagonists of star wars, not the strikingly alien ones and droids. Those are supplementary characters and support the role of the main protagonist, which is the role of the player in these class stories. As such, you would need to include the races of all companion characters, to include wookies, togruta, talz, jawa, devaronian, deshade, droids, houk, trandoshan, mon cal, weequay, chagrian, cathar, gand, sarkhai, and kaleesh. Quite a lot of diversity, don'cha think? Yet again, this comes off as entitlement, just like the 'wads in the summer were with, "The races are fine, but why isn't *my* favorite race included?" Just get over it, there's solid reasons behind this, and the legacy system has already shown to increase racial choices in the core classes (e.g., Miraluka Sith Warrior).

 

I know that one is more of a personal taste but I simply expected to have at least all the races from the previous game.

 

The fact you're asking for FPS mechanics in an MMORPG is both laughable and obtuse. A game did try that once, it was called Tabula Rasa. That turd was dropped on some poor development company's lap by Lord British before he flew off into space. The cover system is only for the IA and smuggler classes. It is a core playstyle mechanic developed for them only. To share it with other classes cheapens it's affect and is basically becomes an unnatural way to use basic line of sight defenses against ranged classes. It's simply not to be shared, and to implement an FPS-type mechanic into this MMO would be a horribly devastating thing in how it would change the mechanics of every single class and every single encounter. It's a bad idea.

 

Not sure where I asked about a FPS. I asked for a choice of weapons like it's possible in many other MMO and I asked for a cover system that doesn't look 10 years old.

 

The personal jetpacks for bounty hunters are meant for short bursts of speed or thrust. They're not *travelling* jetpacks. Bounty Hunters aren't the rocketeer. They're not Commander Cody (the old Sci-Fi serial, not the dude from Clone Wars). It's based fully on Boba/Jango Fetts' rocketpack, which allows him short bursts of elevation and mobility, and the bounty hunter gains abilities that emphasize the jet pack's prowess.

 

Again, I wonder where you take your information. I don't ask to be Iron Man, I ask for an actual use for jetpack outside of combat, like high jumping and access out-of-reach places.

 

You won't start over? It's been a month. This game will operate for years. You won't start over? Lord almighty...

 

Exact. I will stay with my character and expect to live in the Star Wars universe.

 

The standard prose about this bad ideas is that private, instanced areas take players out of the planets and out of the fleet. It turns a highly populated centralized area of commerce and communication from the server's faction into a deadzone, which you yourself were rallying against! They turn the game into a lobby, which is what WarCraft has become and games like DDO were developed around, where you sit and wait with no one around you until the system assigns you what you want to do. They don't incite socialization, they create a divergance to it and sever it due to severing the playerbase from itself.

 

"Having a guild is a permanent group chat"? wow. Your guild sucks. Mine has an entire backstory. We have diplomatic ties with other guilds. We have an entire storyline with a sister republic guild. We have events and an in-character player bounty system that pays members thousands for specific hits and marks we put out. We have social occassions both formal and informal. We have assigned roles and collateral duties and a fully functional chain of command for prople so they know who to go to in order to meet an expert to handle any situation that might come up. We have a class guide system in place, a craftsman expert system in place. We have all these tools to help our members be better and ensure they have fun playing the game they purchased, and all your guild is good for is "Group chat"? Your guild sucks.

 

And you do that... where? On a forum? All your data, information and guides? I want to do that in the game, having real links to other guilds, computers with the data, libraries with the information, real room with chairs for reunions and a way to alter the setting. Don't insult, it makes you look like a bad person.

 

This is more of you wanting the development team to make you stop being lazy and for them to do your work. IF you want to organize something, organize it. Operations, Hard-Mode Flashpoints, Warzones, and RvR are the basic tenets, but there's finishing your class quest, finding datacrons, finding codex entries, uncovering all explorables in every planet, doing all the bonus series' quests, meeting people. You've given this content, but if you don't want to do it, it's not Bioware's fault. There's 7 other storylines you can do. If you manage to finish all eight with all content done, then you can complain that there's nothing to do.

 

You said it, instances and PvP, the only things to do when you are done with your story. We can't do other things if we don't have the tools. Story will be good for a time but it ends and people will leave.

 

It useless fluff and wasted resources on something that will be completely unused once the novelty wears off and made into a character bank, plenty of which exist, and a private, instanced lobby, which is the antithesis to the MMO landscape that Bioware intends to cultivate. Player cities were graveyards in SWG, they were grave*stones* in UO. This is not a sandbox game. You need to get over that.

 

Funny how me telling you to "get over it" is starting to be like a little motto.

 

Crafting is fine. It's easy. Random is fair.

 

Get over it.

 

This isn't Galaxies.

 

This isn't WarCraft.

 

This isn't EVE.

 

Get over it.

 

Fluff to you. You must realize, and it's the key concept on this forum, that you-are-not-alone. Other people have other tastes and since this is the only Star Wars MMO and our only choice to go in that universe, it needs to be bigger than raiding and rerolling to do the same thing all over again.

 

If you answer again, do it without insulting and thinking you are alone on the planet and that everything you don't like must not be in the game.

 

1. You act like nothing will ever be added or changed in the game. Its not static mmo's evolve.

2. Player housing = NO. Go outside stop living in a fantasty world.

 

It's too late for a lot of stuff. Do you think they'll go back to each planet and add day/night? Or add life to the worlds and cities? I'd be really surprised. As for housing and living an experience, if you don't like it, don't use it, as simple as that. No need to tell other people what to do because they won't.

 

It isn't a sandbox game and never will be one. Not what BioWare is about. BioWare is about them telling you the story, and you participating in their story. Not about you making up your own content and story.

 

SWG was a long time ago in a gaming industry far, far away. Sandbox ideas are a niche market. EVE satisfies it, for the most part. A BioWare game is not going to be a sandbox.

 

As other people said, ask yourself about what you'll do when your story ends. Just ask yourself.

[qwertydood]

RazielHex, there are SO many things wrong with your arguments that I don't even know where to begin. Luckily, Dreossk hit on a lot of them.

[Adoan]

Hey,

 

This game is a master piece. The combat is excellent, and the story is beautifully executed. If you are at 50 with nothing to do then you are not playing the game correctly.

 

I know for a fact that you haven't cleared all the content on all the difficulties or reached the highest valor rank. This is what a typical mmo is all about. You do daily's,quest,pvp, and raid.

 

If you want silly features the op is posting about please go to http://www.facebook.com and play their silly games.

 

Keep up the good work Bioware. Don't let the trolls get you down. The majority of the community appreciates and loves the game. We are spreading the word to our friends and families that this game is masterfully crafted.

 

Remember this Bioware "If you got haters, you must be doing something right"

 

Wurth

[Shakaff]

Excellent thread. How did Bioware miss some of these 'little' things that made SW great in the first place?

[audioedge]

Hey,

 

This game is a master piece. The combat is excellent, and the story is beautifully executed.

 

Obviously a BW employee. Its exactly like reading the 10/10 reviews on metacritic. Hilarious.

[Asuka]

It is trivial and stuff that can be added down the road and nobody can be "disappointed" with space combat because they've been talking about it the past year and how ground combat is the primary focus of the game so it's not like they haven't talked about it for a year.

[SlickDevlan]

Man the OP is wound tight.

 

None, zero, zip, nada, jack squat, ect of the items he is so fervently whining about are "needed".

 

Would it be nice if they were here? Probably. Are they going to be added someday? Maybe. Do they affect the actual gameplay in anyway whatsoever? Not even close.

[Kailbane]

The OP does make some good valid points in my opinion.

 

The dead world feel is particularly starting to bother me and with my BH now being L48 and questing in Corellia, it's probably the killing blow for me personally. It's just so lifeless and dull no amount of story or voice acting can bring that place to life. It's not like it's the only lifeless world too because many other zones feel like this and are just not fun for me personally. It's not just the lifeless feel though, it's also the design of the worlds.

 

Opinions are obviously subjective and I realize others may like these zones and enjoy the questing but few could argue against them feeling lifeless. I never expected to feel like this after one months play and am quite gutted to be honest as I've been following this game since it was first announced and was expecting it to be more exciting and vibrant.

 

No doubt it will get better and improve quite a bit over time, I just don't think it's going to improve enough for me to remain interested.

 

 

I have to agree completely.