SWTOR: Theme-park MMO design. End of the road?

[macumba]

clever made sandbox elements at max level would take a lot of pressure from development to produce new content even faster. I can't see anyone in the world produce themepark content faster than people consume it nowadays.

[ActionPrinny]

I don't mind certain themepark-y games. But SWTOR takes it to a new level in terms of the linear path of everything in game. Same quests over and over for each alt. So painful.

 

This is ultra-themepark. Too far. Bioware should stick to single-player games (which this is, but was marketed as a MMORPG).

 

I would say the linear paths are indeed a problem. When running an alt you may want to skip certain chains of the quests, but since they are all linked you don't really have a choice. And the XP gain system is designed around quest completion. Grinding gives relatively little XP/hour in comparison.

 

And we aren't asking for an SWG 2.0 -- well, most of us aren't at least. We're pointing out that if there were sandbox elements to the game for people to kill time in, they wouldn't feel nearly as bored and angry about the current state of Post-50 gameplay. A theme park game that has various fluff or on-going things to do while waiting between content updates.

 

It doesn't help that the one time-killer you COULD do is PvP warzones, but it's so painful to gear up for. It was bad enough when you got a piece of champion gear from the bag half the time. Now it takes even longer after the nerf. And that entire time you are just getting completely destroyed by the people that got into PvP early and already have their equipment.

 

I know I sure don't feel like queuing at all, at least. I can't even earn medals because I just get wrecked and can't do any damage or healing since expertise has such a drastic effect. I think the most I've gotten was 3.

[Darth_Grissom]

I miss Ultima ONLINE

 

 

There were no levels, instead you leveled skills. You got to choose 7 skills and each skill capped at 100

 

When my skills were all 100 I was

 

1. A Real Estate Agent for the entire server

2. Was an interior designer for people's homes

3. Was a treasure hunter

4. Was a bounty hunter

5. Was a miner

6. Ran my own vendor mall

7. Dungon Crawled

8. Was a house flipper

9. Was a custom hiome builder

10. Was a fisherman

11. Made the best armor in the game and sold it at my vendor mall

12. Was a rare item collector and ran a museum

13. Was a daily, weekly, monthly, rare item camper

14. Was a player killer ((I had two characters))

15. Was a house decay camper

16. Was a gardener and grew plants and sold them, some rare plants made a ton of money

17. Was an artifact collector when they were added in.

18. Was a Tamer that tamed dragons and bests and sold them to other tamers

 

 

 

 

 

In SWTOR I

 

1. Raids/flashpoints ((The same as dungon crawl))

2. PVP ((The same as being a bounty hunter))

 

Now you tell me what is wrong with this picture. Crafting is pointless in this game by the way.

 

Everything listed on the ultima online list I did on ONE character except Player killed. I did that on my off time ((When I had any))

 

There was so much to do when my toon was complete that I never got bored. Looking at that list and then looking at SWTOR.........kinda seems a little one sided to me.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Darth_Grissom

[Rhymez]

I was an absolute fanboy of this game.

Couldnt wait for it to come out, and shunned anyone who opposed it.

 

However,

 

Although i knew it was going to be similar to WoW, i didnt realise how much.

 

I'm so sick of theme park mmo's.

 

hit level cap.

gear up.

heroics.

gear up.

operations/raids.

gear up.

pvp etc.

 

Its so damn dull and sad.

Its like going from Arma 2 to Call of duty.

 

Im so gutted that they had the opportunity to make a mind-blowing star wars mmo.

when its pretty much a WoW clone.

[Lord_Lunacy]

SWTOR right now however, is suffering a "death by a thousand paper cuts" as it were, with regards to quality-of-life design issues, and the unguided state of post-50 content. There are myriad little design annoyances with the game that when compounded, have a sizable affect on peoples' perceptions of the game. Combine that with the sink-or-swim nature of content once you reach L50, and it's no wonder server populations are already dwindling.[/i]

 

Heh, a like idiom, SWTOR is being nickel-and-dimed to death. This is exactly how I feel about the game...lots of small annoyances have eroded my patience...well that, and maybe just general MMO burnout.

[Cavadus]

TOR is like the biggest, baddest battleship of an MMO ever built but we're just one Battle of Midway away from goliaths like this becoming obsolete forever.

 

Honestly, I can't wait to finally play an aircraft carrier.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Cavadus

[pieteral]

Social networking is so huge now

[/i]

 

I believe the above is a very strong point made.

The mechanics of MMO gaming has become a standard and everybody is doing the same thing but just slightly different. What is the significant innovative milestone difference between swtor and others? Voice over? ..... yeah is cool, is it a milestone?

 

Why not leave this rigid platform and take a real leap into the future ..... take some risks .... do something crazy .....

 

SWTOR brings people together, do something with it ....

[formulaic]

IMHO traditional sandboxes are too expensive, too buggy and too much of a risk for anyone to build a sandbox MMO in 2012.

 

But that doesn't mean that 'Theme parks' are the future exactly. WAR->Rift has shown the possibility of a 'Safari park' - a place where the rides are part of the park, are quite unpredictable and can trash your cafe.

 

Anyway, MMO design is evolution - and in a way we are evolving back towards some very different types of sandbox.

[Goretzu]

clever made sandbox elements at max level would take a lot of pressure from development to produce new content even faster. I can't see anyone in the world produce themepark content faster than people consume it nowadays.

 

Given the rate it took them to produce L1-50 in this game we'd be talking years for them to develop and yet weeks for the fastest and only a few months for the average to consume it.

 

Which results in a player base that is always bored pretty much.

 

Personally I cannot see how SWTOR can survive without a change in what it includes.

[releena]

MMOs in the past featured an extensive grind with few quests. My first character in EQ1 took 50 days /played to hit L50, for example. (18-20 days for WoW) But what current MMOs are missing is the social aspect of MMO gaming from the past -- sure you were grinding, but chatting with groupmates and those in the zone was just as important or moreso than leveling your character. This is one of the largest reasons the Korean market still prefers heavier grinds -- it's for the socializing. I think they need to lengthen out the leveling once more and tap more into the social aspects of MMOs. Social networking is so huge now -- why is it that Massively MULTIPLAYER games are such insular solo content these days?

 

I'm sure someone else must have commented on this already with the exact same response I'm going to give, but what exactly is stopping people from chatting with people in the zone? There are also tons of group quests where socializing can happen. I'm not really seeing this as the fault of the game.

 

In Rift, hordes of people would be partied together during world quests and yet there was barely any talking. Like EQ, in FFXI leveling was a group grind yet people weren't overly loquacious. There was almost no zone talking whatsoever besides in the cities. Forced grouping was terrible, that's why games moved away from it (and subscription numbers boomed as a result). I can't even imagine trying to do anything at all in FFXI if you could only play ~2 hours a day. Not uncommonly, your party barely started xping after 2 hours.

 

TOR's problem, from what I can see, is that leveling is way too streamlined with quests. I do agree that you level too fast, as it seems players follow the level curve of an area solely through the solo quests. If you stop to do heroics/flashpoints/warzones/space missions you outpace the curve. I don't even bother logging out in cantinas because I level too fast anyway. Can't comment on lv50 because after 2 weeks I'm not even lv40.

 

As for some of the other comments, TERA didn't even do well in Korea, I don't know how people believe it will fare well here where everyone complains about not enough content. Besides, it's not even the first action MMO in English so it's hardly breaking new territory on that front. GW2 will probably be a good game, but there's no way in hell it will ever live up to the holy grail standard that so many are raising it to.

[Skysong]

I miss Ultima ONLINE

 

 

There were no levels, instead you leveled skills. You got to choose 7 skills and each skill capped at 100

 

When my skills were all 100 I was

 

1. A Real Estate Agent for the entire server

2. Was an interior designer for people's homes

3. Was a treasure hunter

4. Was a bounty hunter

5. Was a miner

6. Ran my own vendor mall

7. Dungon Crawled

8. Was a house flipper

9. Was a custom hiome builder

10. Was a fisherman

11. Made the best armor in the game and sold it at my vendor mall

12. Was a rare item collector and ran a museum

13. Was a daily, weekly, monthly, rare item camper

14. Was a player killer ((I had two characters))

15. Was a house decay camper

16. Was a gardener and grew plants and sold them, some rare plants made a ton of money

17. Was an artifact collector when they were added in.

18. Was a Tamer that tamed dragons and bests and sold them to other tamers

 

 

 

 

 

In SWTOR I

 

1. Raids/flashpoints ((The same as dungon crawl))

2. PVP ((The same as being a bounty hunter))

 

Now you tell me what is wrong with this picture. Crafting is pointless in this game by the way.

 

Everything listed on the ultima online list I did on ONE character except Player killed. I did that on my off time ((When I had any))

 

There was so much to do when my toon was complete that I never got bored. Looking at that list and then looking at SWTOR.........kinda seems a little one sided to me.

 

i absolutely LOVE your post, although i'm sure it will be torn to pieces by zealots, that should take nothing away from it's validity. This is the kind of stuff we need. Sandparks really are what is needed at this point, and this incessant bickering about themepark vs sandbox will go away. There needs to be a ton of content for both sides in one game with a great IP. Sandbox content? oh we've got a TRUCKLOAD of it. Endgame raiding and boxed up pvp? Tons of it. that way, the devs would be literally suffocating in green bills.

 

people say it can't be done. prove me wrong. i'm a firm believer that it can be done but no one has taken their balls out of their purse yet and done it.

 

all in all: i miss those days too.

[ActionPrinny]

I'm sure someone else must have commented on this already with the exact same response I'm going to give, but what exactly is stopping people from chatting with people in the zone? There are also tons of group quests where socializing can happen. I'm not really seeing this as the fault of the game.

 

In Rift, hordes of people would be partied together during world quests and yet there was barely any talking. Like EQ, in FFXI leveling was a group grind yet people weren't overly loquacious. There was almost no zone talking whatsoever besides in the cities. Forced grouping was terrible, that's why games moved away from it (and subscription numbers boomed as a result). I can't even imagine trying to do anything at all in FFXI if you could only play ~2 hours a day. Not uncommonly, your party barely started xping after 2 hours.

 

It's hard to socialize when the dialogues for all quests require watching and actively responding to them. And it hides the chat window as well. Part of the reason why, which I don't think we'll end up going back to but .... is that respawn times were much slower in games like EQ1 and FF11. Especially in EQ1, and often in FF11 (at least when I played it within the first year or two of NA launch) you would kill all the mobs in your area and have some downtime to socialize.

 

Forced grouping IMHO isn't bad if you have good matchmaking options. Your only option in EQ/FF11 was shouting for people and forming a group. And grouping areas were generally fixed. (No instancing either) With better LFG options you could quickly form up a balanced group for leveling quests. And the few times more than 1 person is required for a quest in SWTOR, even the Heroic4's are maybe 10mins long tops. (Not to mention you overlevel stuff so much there is isn't even a reason to do them, so most people skip em)

 

The other major flaw with SWTOR is that you basically have to go to the fleet to form a flashpoint group. They all start out of there, and it has the largest audience to see your messages. They also don't do a good job of explaining where/how to use the LFG system. (And it's so rudimentary) They're also REALLY LONG. Even on normal mode while leveling, certain FPs could take upwards of 90mins+

[Truga]

If Bioware really wants SWTOR to succeed they need to first and foremost, provide more cohesive guidance on how to proceed at L50, but then also add in sandbox elements to give players ways to spend their time between patches. Player housing, a total revamp of the crafting system for a more meaningful meta-game, etc. Heck I think an amazing thing would be an EVE-like space part of the game that you could explore and carve out your own little niche, except far less ruthless than EVE, of course.

(Quality of life and Guidance issues I'll address in a separate thread)

 

This.

 

As for QoL issues, I have none other than the (now much less noticable) combat delay problems. My only problem is a complete lack of things that make MMOs MMOs. Player housing (cities even?), proper space: this is star wars, the most decisive battles were done in space (yavin, endor), player (guild?) capital ships, etc.

 

If we get a good space expansion I'll sub for life and delete EVE, because while EVE is awesome as far as PVP goes, it just isn't SW.

[arikewaza]

casual player max 2 hour of playing a day

 

 

80% of player in mmo spend 3-5 hour per day

 

it's the easywin/loot/bug/cheat the probleme

 

we have 2 raid with 5 boss each and with 3 dificult cap but craps/easy/borring/Pullkillloot style

so i don't talk about pvp's content

 

just Upping the dificult cap of the game

unbug him

and after make contente , or let actual contente easy and futur more more harder

[marshalleck]

i absolutely LOVE your post, although i'm sure it will be torn to pieces by zealots, that should take nothing away from it's validity. This is the kind of stuff we need. Sandparks really are what is needed at this point, and this incessant bickering about themepark vs sandbox will go away. There needs to be a ton of content for both sides in one game with a great IP. Sandbox content? oh we've got a TRUCKLOAD of it. Endgame raiding and boxed up pvp? Tons of it. that way, the devs would be literally suffocating in green bills.

 

people say it can't be done. prove me wrong. i'm a firm believer that it can be done but no one has taken their balls out of their purse yet and done it.

 

all in all: i miss those days too.

 

Well, I think you're probably right, and I think this approach will be key to the next revolutionary MMO, whatever and whenever that may be.

Edited February 16, 2012 by marshalleck

[lizardjoel]

How are you guys so fast at leveling?

 

It took me 2 years to get my hunter to level cap in wow, and its been 2 months at SWTOR, and my assassin is still 23, i personally like this game better than others, It feels more like a story unfolding and leveling in games like wow feels like a chore.

[Vinge]

It's hard to socialize when the dialogues for all quests require watching and actively responding to them. And it hides the chat window as well. Part of the reason why, which I don't think we'll end up going back to but .... is that respawn times were much slower in games like EQ1 and FF11. Especially in EQ1, and often in FF11 (at least when I played it within the first year or two of NA launch) you would kill all the mobs in your area and have some downtime to socialize.

 

 

Agree with this in terms of why people don't socialise in MMOs these days compared to older ones like EQ - modern MMOs seemed to be designed to eliminate any real downtime between fights and the downtime periods were when much of the chatting used to happen in games like EQ.

 

Plus MMO gameplay now seems to be based around every class constantly using abilities, so when fights are happening it's very hard to chat. Again, older games like EQ weren't based around having to spam abilities constantly while fighting so people were able to type at the same time.

 

Both of these, the elimination of downtime and the constant need to use abilities, are very clearly concioius design decisions of modern MMOs which have had the effect of reducing the level of social interaction between players when grouped.

[ActionPrinny]

About the "theme park + sandbox" can't be done:

 

With the amount of budget SWTOR had, if they had just voiced the class quests or part of the main planet storylines, they probably would have had plenty of money and resources available to add sandbox elements before release.

 

It's their own fault for spending so much of their budget on a leveling curve designed to be under 8 days /played. Then everyone sits at Vaiken twiddling their thumbs.

[DarthKhaos]

I am going to have to say the lack of social aspect in this game is more the fault of the community then it is the game. And that this varies by server. I mean, the game rewards you for playing even standard quests as a group via the social points and social levels system which unlocks unique gear for your character. Plus, you can always dismiss your companion and never play with them and instead, group with three other players.

This guy gets it. I laugh HARD when they say the game doesn't facilitate being social. It is sooooooooo easy to add someone to your friends list after grouping with them for a quest or flashpoint. They place an add friend button under a little picture of em and their name in the quest reward window. Social Points to encourage grouping. They even created a central Hub called Fleet so you don't got to go all over the place to enter a flashpoint and you can hang out outside the flashpoint waiting for a group to scoop you up without being out in the middle of nowhere and you can create custom channels just like in other games. The only thing that hurts is that you cannot add a friend that's offline, however I've played a game that you cannot add someone as a friend unless you're physically in close proximity.

 

I was in a thread where people there were proud of their anti-socialism. "I do not want to socialize with strangers." Then why join an MMO? "We don't want another Barrens Chat." Barrens Chat was fun, people were having fun shooting the breeze. THAT'S what MMOs are about. Yes I'm THAT GUY talking smack during the conversations in flashpoints and not hitting spacebar. I'm THAT GUY making silly jokes in General Chat. I'm THAT guy that provides helpful information 5 times in 1 hr to every new person who appears on fleet and asks "Where do I go to respec?" And I LOVE being THAT GUY.

[Truga]

And I LOVE being THAT GUY.

 

We're a dying breed :<

[DarthKhaos]

The LFG window is very awkward and rudimentary. PvP warzones have a queue system, but Flashpoints don't. Even something as simple as having a Highlighted link for group forming you could post to chat/have listed in the LFG system under various subheadings would help a lot. That way people could just click the link and get put in the group. Even better would be the group leader being able to teleport the other members to them for the Heroic then they get deposited back where they were afterwards possibly.

I agree that the current tool is crude but I wouldn't call it awkward. I mean all you have to do is click one checkboc and type in just like if you're asking in general LFG <flashpoint>. It could definitely use some upgrades like http://i.imgur.com/GC5SR.jpg that would be nice for all.

 

Don't know how teleportation helps with socializing.

 

Bioware should stick to single-player games (which this is, but was marketed as a MMORPG).

People said the same thing about Blizzard.

 

I would say the linear paths are indeed a problem. When running an alt you may want to skip certain chains of the quests, but since they are all linked you don't really have a choice.

No game that has quest chains allow you to skip part of the chain. Either you do the chain or you don't.

Edited February 16, 2012 by DarthKhaos

[otakuon]

It's hard to socialize when the dialogues for all quests require watching and actively responding to them. And it hides the chat window as well. Part of the reason why, which I don't think we'll end up going back to but .... is that respawn times were much slower in games like EQ1 and FF11. Especially in EQ1, and often in FF11 (at least when I played it within the first year or two of NA launch) you would kill all the mobs in your area and have some downtime to socialize.

 

I am not sure what you mean by conversations "hide the chat window". Yes, they fade out when you first enter a convo, but they show up again as soon as someone types something. Also, you can type in them during the conversations. I do it all the time.

 

I can kinda see maybe having a queuing system for Flashpoint. Although, I would probably never use such a system because my experience with players who are not my friends our guild-mates as not been so stellar (i.e., players getting mad because you want to listen to the convo, rushing though the FP from one objective to the next, aggroing all the mobs along the way, needing on EVERY item drop, etc.).

 

Again, this just goes back to my point that MMO players and gamers in general, as a whole, have become progressively LAZIER. Their is no longer the "sense of ownership" that a MMO community once had. Having a great social aspect in an MMO requires people to go out of their way and do their part. The developers can add all the tools that they want, but if the players just don't take the effort to build a community, they are useless.

 

Guess what I am saying is that what makes me the most sad about the current state of MMOs is that as a community and social body of gamers, we are becoming more selfish and narcissistic.

Edited February 16, 2012 by otakuon

[GalacticKegger]

About the "theme park + sandbox" can't be done:

 

With the amount of budget SWTOR had, if they had just voiced the class quests or part of the main planet storylines, they probably would have had plenty of money and resources available to add sandbox elements before release.

 

It's their own fault for spending so much of their budget on a leveling curve designed to be under 8 days /played.

No one is at fault because there is no fault. EA/BW/LA spent their money on what they advertised they would spend it on, and their product reflects it. The game is different because of it and not everyone is comfortable with different. And that's okay.

 

The concept of maxing out a character in 8 days seems rather disingenuous. Assuming a player is at it for 10 hours a day every day (including weekdays) that would be 80 hours in 8 days - the equivalent of two full time jobs. At this rate the character would level up every 96 minutes. And that's at 10 hours per day. Play less than 10 hours per day over the same 8-day stretch, and the leveling pace is even faster. (50 hrs = a lvl every hour, 25 hours = a lvl every ½ hr, etc.) Easy enough to do up to maybe level 13 or so. But after that? Unless one either skips the game's focus content entirely, abuses exploits or employs a speed hack - I don't see how.

 

Then everyone sits at Vaiken twiddling their thumbs.

On Mask of Nihilus, Vaiken rocks ftw. Thumbs are optional:

http://www.galactickegger.com/SWTOR/Screenshot_2012-02-02_19_48_31_312500.jpg

http://www.galactickegger.com/SWTOR/Screenshot_2012-02-12_18_29_28_062500.jpg

http://www.galactickegger.com/SWTOR/Screenshot_2012-02-13_20_31_45_024701.jpg

 

FYI: the timeline of these screens starts on 02-02-12 and ends on 02-13-12. That's 7 levels (lvl 27 to 34) in 11 days, and I played this toon maybe 20 hours a week max (4 or 5 hour weeknights twice a week and 10 hours or so on both Saturdays) during that span. That equates to roughly 7 levels in 30 hours, or 4½ hrs per level. We've also done stuff like datacron hunts, crafting, putting things up on the GTN, general toon admin... and we play along with the quest interactions. So considering the more ancillary stuff, that 4½ hours can effectively be reduced to maybe 3 or 3½ hours per level of actual focused leveling. I think that's probably a bit closer to their design goals.

Edited February 16, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Jakeithus]

About the "theme park + sandbox" can't be done:

 

With the amount of budget SWTOR had, if they had just voiced the class quests or part of the main planet storylines, they probably would have had plenty of money and resources available to add sandbox elements before release.

 

It's their own fault for spending so much of their budget on a leveling curve designed to be under 8 days /played. Then everyone sits at Vaiken twiddling their thumbs.

 

The problem is that there is no consensus as to what developers should spend their money on. Personally, fully voiced quests are a game changer for me. I can't see myself playing another MMO again where a large portion of quests are delivered via text, and I am sure I am not alone.

 

Now, any truly successful theme park + sandbox needs to be voiced, as well as all of the demands that other people are making. I can't see that ever happening. The nature of the beast is that there will never be a MMO large enough to make everyone happy, at least out of the gate. With people bailing on games after a month or two that disappoint them, new games will have a hard time developing the staying power required to develop the features that will make everyone happy.

[Aisar]

Pretty much, OP. They made a single player game on rails and it's boring. SURPRISE!

 

I just started playing Everquest 2 about 2 days ago, blows TOR away. Nice to switch to something that is so much better and have that omg moment when you all the pieces fall into place lol.

 

This Bioware team stinks, and their game is a steaming pile. Congrats BW, hope you are ready to all lose your jobs like that Warhammer CS who posted his article about Warhammer's fall.

 

Personally it can't come fast enough for me.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Aisar