Is has potential, but too many features are missing

[RudeDog]

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.

 

 

 

 

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.*

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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...

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

Wow, you bashed all his ideas but didn't have the intelligence to deliver any ideas of your own...

[LeonBraun]

Vash in WoW was the greatest thing ever...

 

A massive underwater zone that was brilliantly crafted.

Edited January 23, 2012 by LeonBraun

[RazielHex]

Wow, you bashed all his ideas but didn't have the intelligence to deliver any ideas of your own...

 

Intelligence has nothing to do with that.

 

I like the way things are and I understand why they're that way.

[Waxmask]

Once again this topic proves that fanbois hurt this game bad, very bad! OP comes with alot of good ideas for improving this game. But instead of staying out of the discussion they add there input by saying the game is fine, and nothing should be added cause thats fluff.

 

That makes me so angry!!! What's wrong with a guy trying to give input on how to improve immersion. Alot of us are asking for it!!! If you don't want it, stick to your raids and PVP, for me a MMORPG has always been more than that! I like to breathe, feel and taste the world around me. I want to see people propper Roleplay there character, with the propper tools handed to them.

 

But as I said You fanbois ruined it for me and alot more and if things don't improve FAST you'lll soon be crying too cause there is no way EA will take a loss on this. Once most of us are gone this game gets closed and thats a fact if you look at EA's track record!

 

What I like to add btw: VO emotes/lines to use in conversations!!!

Edited January 23, 2012 by Waxmask

[TargetOne]

One thing I'd like to see: a "global friends list", like some other MMOs have.

 

Right now, all we have available to us is a "one-character-to-one-character" friend relationship. Your current character can be "friends" with another character.

 

Trouble is, this game lets us have multiple characters on any given server, and there are dozens of servers we can play on. So a given player could potentially have dozens of characters.

 

Now, suppose you became good friends with another player (either because you know him or her IRL or just hung out all the time in-game). Naturally, you'd want to know when that player is online. But in SWTOR, the only way to do this is to essentially ask him or her the names of ALL of that player's characters on your server, add each and every one of those characters as "friends", and do so for every one of your OWN characters. So, if a player has four characters on, say, Lord Adraas, and YOU have four of your own, you have to do the "add friend" process 4 x 4 = 16 times!!! All that for keeping in touch with ONE player on ONE server!

 

What if you or the other player create another new character or three? And after all that, this doesn't take into account the possibility of having friends who play on on more than one server.

 

A global friends list would solve this issue. Every player account would have a "global" user name or handle associated with it, completely separate from any character. (Another game I play prefaces all global names with "@" to distinguish them from character names.) Once you add someone as a "global friend", you'd be able to see when they are online and communicate with them no matter WHICH character they were playing, or WHAT server they were playing on.

 

Naturally, there would have to be a means to tell what global is associated with a particular character, and vice-versa, and it would be a good idea to have a way to disable this ability on your own global for the sake of privacy (along with a way to "hide" from other, specific globals).

[siza]

This OP is the master topic of SWTOR game. Today i have logout at the taris cantina...here there is only desolation and dead NPC. We want a LIVE universe and not a multisingleplayer campain! Hear our voice Bioware!

[Dreossk]

Once again this topic proves that fanbois hurt this game bad, very bad! OP comes with alot of good ideas for improving this game. But instead of staying out of the discussion they add there input by saying the game is fine, and nothing should be added cause thats fluff.

 

That makes me so angry!!! What's wrong with a guy trying to give input on how to improve immersion. Alot of us are asking for it!!! If you don't want it, stick to your raids and PVP, for me a MMORPG has always been more than that! I like to breathe, feel and taste the world around me. I want to see people propper Roleplay there character, with the propper tools handed to them.

 

But as I said You fanbois ruined it for me and alot more and if things don't improve FAST you'lll soon be crying too cause there is no way EA will take a loss on this. Once most of us are gone this game gets closed and thats a fact if you look at EA's track record!

 

What I like to add btw: VO emotes/lines to use in conversations!!!

 

I don't understand it either. None of this would hurt the people that like raiding and instanced PvP and it would bring a bigger crowd in the game. Maybe they think that if BioWare works on content like that, they won't get a new raid each patch? I think there is a way of alternating the changes to satisfy more people. One day they add new gear and a flashpoint, a couple of weeks later they add housing and a decoration system.

 

But I don't fool myself about the dead worlds, I don't think they will go back and add life and details in their previous planets.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Dreossk

[siza]

This is a common SWTOR cantina (2011):

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1322/screenshot2012012300074.jpg

This is a common Mass Effect cantina (2010):

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/429415-mass-effect-2-xbox-360-screenshot-get-a-drink-watch-a-show.jpg

[Dreossk]

That's another good example of the absence of life in the world of SWTOR.

[JediMasterShake]

You know... as I watch videos for GW2 I am amazed at the detail they seem to have already in place in the game.

 

I believe the title of your thread truly sums up how I feel about the game.

 

It was the same model as wow - so why did it fail? Yes, there are bugs, yes, it's unstable at time and gameplay isn't as responsive - but it truly lacks features. It just tried to do the same old everything, and did it all pretty well but not great.

 

It's a decent MMO with a lot of story.

[Rigota]

OP made a post i totally agree with.

 

Linear planets/mazes/walls/ disappoint me the most, because this is already made with a lot of effort but with lack of innovation and won't be changed so fast.

And they even have even more linear boxed instances(quests) on them

They fit maybe a single player game where you are on planets purely for story and don't any focus on exploration at all.

 

 

Examples of freedom and worlds of MMORPGS.

SWG:

WoW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChkjkffsNoc

Edited January 23, 2012 by Rigota

[Satsunoryu]

I agree totally with the OP. I like this game, but it seems as great as voiced dialogue options are, more should have been spent on all of these things.

[DannyInternets]

Intelligence has nothing to do with that.

 

I like the way things are and I understand why they're that way.

 

If only everyone could have standards as miserably low as yours.

[DannyInternets]

Me too, all i got from the OP was "make this game more like wow"

 

There's a reason why WoW is the most successful video game of all time. Improving and adding tried-and-true features to this game is only making the game more like WoW to the extent that it is making SWTOR a good game.

 

It seems the fanboys equate everything good about MMOs with WoW and immediately circle the wagons when anyone suggests this game should adopt some features to improve THIS game's quality. Nope, can't have that--we don't want WoW! Just ignore the fact that this game is already WoW with lightsabers.

Edited January 23, 2012 by DannyInternets

[siza]

If you need to copy someone ... you must copy the best and suit your style.

SWTOR is WoW with lightsabers? Absolutely not.

But if it was or would become in the future ... Blizzard would collapse.

[RycheMykola]

Summary:

I want a Sandbox MMO.

 

The funny thing, if the OP was in a sandbox MMO, he'd be posting in the forums how theres no content or story and is bored.

 

My only complaint is we need increased pole dancers, strippers, and women working in the Cantinas and red light sector on Nar Shaddaa.

[Lordlok]

The thing that angers me the most, is that it is a complete pile of SH.. um Mediocrity with a huge overblown budget.

 

I mean, I will give them kudos on the storyline/voiceover work.

I guess the companion system is a little innovative, so I'll give them props for that as well.

I mean, I am really trying here...

 

What else am I missing? What does this game do that shines? I really wanna try to give it credit where credit is due.However, in terms of what MMO's do and don't do, I think an assessment of Mediocre is being MORE THAN FAIR (My love for Star-Wars weights heavily in this decision).

 

How can they spend so much, and make so little? I guess this is what angers me the most about this game.

[siza]

Summary:

I want a Sandbox MMO.

 

The funny thing, if the OP was in a sandbox MMO, he'd be posting in the forums how theres no content or story and is bored.

 

My only complaint is we need increased pole dancers, strippers, and women working in the Cantinas and red light sector on Nar Shaddaa.

 

 

AHAHAHAH sure!

[RazielHex]

This is a common SWTOR cantina (2011):

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1322/screenshot2012012300074.jpg

This is a common Mass Effect cantina (2010):

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/429415-mass-effect-2-xbox-360-screenshot-get-a-drink-watch-a-show.jpg

 

Congratulations, you can post screenshots from single-player games and multi-player games.

[WizzyWarlock]

Congratulations, you can post screenshots from single-player games and multi-player games.

 

Yes he can. And it just goes to show how awesome of a game we could have had if Bioware had decided to create something original. We all know what a Tatooine cantina looks like, it's in the very first movie released, aliens everywhere, shady gangsters, Jedi chopping arms off..

 

And what do we get in TOR? Empty, dull environments. Personally, if they could make an MMO with graphics and design even slightly similar to that Mass Effect nightclub, I would be in heaven.

[Eldren]

I think the features you're asking for, OP, are in general nice things to have, but they're probably lower priority than other issues for BioWare at the moment. I'm an RPer, and would love to have chat bubbles, but I figure it's "in the works".

 

Having open areas that are only for the purposes of hanging out take up resources from a limited pool of developers, which means they aren't giving us more stuff to actually do, they're just giving us places to be. That's nice, but should be secondary to having things to do.

[Nevron]

If you need to copy someone ... you must copy the best and suit your style.

SWTOR is WoW with lightsabers? Absolutely not.

But if it was or would become in the future ... Blizzard would collapse.

 

It absolutely is WoW with lightsabers. Voice-over questing is all they added to the typical model. You level up solo or with friends/randoms, do lowbie dungeons along the way, then you get to end-game and it's nothing but instanced PvP and dungeons for typical gear progression. That is WoW, and that is SWTOR. Rift and SWTOR are WoW with different IP skins. The subtle differences do not hide the fact that it's the same base premise and model that drives the play of the game.

[Thaltom]

I don't completely agree with everything you posted but you took some time to explain everything in detail and you weren't a complete jerk about it. Kudos. Criticism is good when it is constructive.

 

These two things I can say I would like to see....

 

Day/night cycle

As other caring people on the forum at that time, I was shocked that day a couple of years ago when they announced that every planet would be frozen in time, never to evolve, never to change. It’s mind boggling to see that in a 2012 MMO. A day/night cycle is essential for the mood and immersion of the game. You wanted to organize a RP event during night on a day planet? No chance. You wanted to watch the lights of Coruscant at night? Not possible. You wanted to finally see a day on Nar Shaddaa? Not possible. You wanted to watch the sunset between the hills of Alderaan? No.

 

Dynamic weather

Some planets have special weather but in most case it’s just to limit (limitation being the key word in this game) the zones you can go to like the killer sandstorm on Tatooine if you try to go PvP in the enemy city. Weather needs to be more dynamic, make it rain on Coruscant, spawn a huge blizzard once in a while on Hoth, make the sky change, give life to the world.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Thaltom

[siza]

Anyone who compares this game to a WoW with the lightsaber only proves that he has not set foot on the lands of Azeroth.

[gtmach]

It absolutely is WoW with lightsabers. Voice-over questing is all they added to the typical model. You level up solo or with friends/randoms, do lowbie dungeons along the way, then you get to end-game and it's nothing but instanced PvP and dungeons for typical gear progression. That is WoW, and that is SWTOR. Rift and SWTOR are WoW with different IP skins. The subtle differences do not hide the fact that it's the same base premise and model that drives the play of the game.

 

I love this game but I'll agree with that. The voice acting and class based stories are what really set SWTOR apart as its own, but the rest of the conventions are like WoW.

 

But honestly for me that was good enough. I don't get what the issue is for others though. I just don't see how, after months of footage of beta tests and game conventions and such, people were surprised that this game plays like WoW....