The MMO genre needs to stop looking backwards.

[Minderbinder]

I like a lot about swtor. But I don't like a lot as well. I think the biggest problem is the game feels like I am being held by the hand through a dead world. I never see other players even though I play on a super populated server. Sharding to this extreme is wicked fail. I feel like im playing a single player rpg. I feel like this isn't looking backwards, but not looking at all.

 

This is what I mean, it's like they are actively discouraging socialization. Through sharding, companions, and the quest dialog all serve to isolate players within their own game. General chat gets broken up by the quest chatter, and people don't join up because they can't see each other working on the same quests. Companions (At least on my JK, after Doc I didn't need help with any content, And I had since given up on getting groups for heroics) further isolate people, they don't need help, they already have a helper.

[Yakito]

All the time while reading my mind was think "Eve, Eve, Eve did it"

 

 

I understand you and yes, those money could have been spent on something so much more than just 2 raid instances and no other choice but combat.

 

I keep saying that the game had so much potential but either the designers didn't have big enough imagination or they were just blindly staring at WoW and copying what they thought was best. I think lack of imagination and copying is almost the same anyway.

 

That's what you get when a game is created not by true gamers but by people that just care about money.

[duritz]

this is an absolutely wonderful post. its too bad there aren't more people like you in the gaming industry! definitely a hard career to get into I would imagine. I love people with ideas.

 

 

Kudos OP and Cheers.

 

-duritz

[dahboss]

Amen, OP! Edited February 9, 2012 by dahboss

[Chewpaco]

You've just described a situation where I would (by choice, obviously, but that would drive subscribers away) be required to show up on time to play my game. Raiding is one thing, I raided with a successful progression guild in WoW for a couple months, made me want to quit playing the game. After that I went "casual" raids were at 8pm, but started at 830 or 9.

 

Point is, it wasn't a job, didn't feel like a job, whereas the progression thing did. You're suggesting that in order to play this fictitious game, I'd basically have to stand watch....I did my military service already, not interested in gameifying it. That sounds decidedly UN-fun. Perhaps it sounds great to some of you guys, I'm saying it'll never happen in a $100 million dollar game, because most people don't define that as fun.

 

The build your base and defend it thing has already happened. People logged in at 4am and burnt your stuff the ground. Maybe you can work around that, but it's hugely disingenuous, saying, you can't attack me! I'm sleeeping! At any rate, people won't buy that game like they bought SWTOR. And that's the tradeoff. games like SWG and Ryzom have comparatively tiny playerbases. Even EVE is pretty small, something like 300k accounts.

 

I'm not asking BW to change SWTOR into something it is not - don't get me wrong. I accept it for what it is. A stop-gap. Like every other title on the market right now. It panders to the idea of small group sizes, get everyone participating in end game content. Cool. I am having fun playing it. The story line is great. I love making my journey as a Jedi Consular.

 

BW has done a great job of making me feel like I am part of Episode 7, and a character within it. But it feels like a movie.

 

As to the highlighted red. No people might not buy a game like that like they bought swtor. But, they will stay subscribed.

 

EQ1 still has a self supporting subscriber base - 18 expansions later. 14 years old. The engine, animations, graphics are just far too dated to attract new players, so they will never add plyers, just continue to lose. But their design model is the best. It will always be the best.

 

The perfect game would be EQ (progression flagging system, alternate advancement model, Original Trinity model of: Tank, Heal, Debuff) mixed with a bit of a 3 Faction game like DAoC, mixed with a bit of community built cities like Darkfall, mixed with group conjunction skill system like LotRO, mixed with public group questing found in Warhammer and RIFT.

 

And oh yeah - have the team that did the graphics for FFXIV in charge of all the model builds and city builds.

 

Original WoW did 1 thing right. While it was themepark in nature, it didn't feel linear. There were plenty of options of where to go and what to do. While it may have been too solo oriented for my liking, It was nice to play a game that laid out SOME direction, as opposed to EQ that was a camp and grind.

 

A solution to that would be making all quests found at quest hubs repeatable a certain number of times - that way, anytime you log on to quest, you can pick right up with a group doing the same thing, and not worry about who has completed or not completed. You could also keep debuffing/crowd control classes relevant and fun to play. You could keep the difficulty of normal mobs much higher, and not a 4 second pew pew and you are dead encounter.

 

Enough rambling. Anyone want to loan me 100 million to get started?

[WiGhTkNiGhtt]

Just cancelled my sub. Will prob give it another try after Summer.

 

My main greivances; (in no particular order)

 

Dead Server.

 

Voice acting gets old real fast, especially on non main quests.

 

Companions popping up when returning from missions no matter what I'm doing.

 

Lazy design on planets, all the buildings look the same, Planets are terribly boring.

 

Dungeons and Raids I'm already sick of from other games.

 

Generally boring endgame.

 

No real innovation, just copying other MMOs.

 

Stealth nerfing.

 

As OP states people are tired of the same grind formula from WOW, when is someone going to really try something different. I hoped SWTOR would be the one and I was disappointed.