Chapter One: OF COURSE it's the Endgame!

[JustTed]

For the record, I love this game. This is what motivates me to post what I hope will be constructive criticism. This is a great game with much potential. That said…

 

Of course it’s the end game!

 

And to prove it to yourself, just ask yourself which will take up much, much more of your time: Getting from level 1 to 50 or the time you’ll spend at 50? Even as a confessed alt-aholic this is going to be easy for me. Most alt-aholics I know, myself included, still have a “main” that is pretty much the focus of their efforts. I log onto alts when there’s nothing to do on my main. Perhaps there are players who just solo, and rotate among a cadre of characters that are all treated equally, but I have to ask what these folks are doing in an MMO with a persistent world.

 

I suppose it’s possible, but I think for most of us, we play a main, and progressing that character is the goal.

 

Almost everything went into levels 1-50, and while there is a good deal of content at 50, there’s not nearly enough of it and it’s not nearly varied enough. I actually like space combat because, instead of comparing it to Rogue Squadron or (absurdly) X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, I’m comparing it to a Daily Quest, which is what it is. The alternative to space combat in another MMO would have been three more dailies, which would have been, well, you know: Go kill a dozen of these guys, or click these objects dispersed among these guys, or something equally banal. Compared to that, space combat is a triumph.

 

But the game needs many, many more ideas like this to keep people occupied at 50. Even space combat itself, if you didn’t change the game play mechanics at all, could simply use a lot more content. The same three missions with the same static objectives got old during week one. Now it’s just a chore, and not even a very profitable one.

 

Ditto on most dailies, which are stale and repetitive. I know you can’t make a Diablo-style world which will randomly assemble itself each time I log on since we all share the same world, but with a game as heavily instanced as this, surely you can do better than “Go kill these 15 static mobs. Yes, the same ones as yesterday!”

 

Crafting is another great indicator that most of the thought went into levels 1-50 and not 50 itself. Why? Because at 50 your trade is practically worthless.

 

I have a capped Artificer and Synthweaver, so maybe things are different elsewhere. You guys tell me. Here’s my beef, and I’m going to use artifice as the example here, but this applies equally well to synthweaving.

 

When I hit 50, I made sure I had the artifact recipe for the Guardian Lightsaber Hilt ready to go. The instant I hit 50, I slotted this bad-boy into my lightsaber, which made it rank 124.

 

This lasted me exactly one day.

 

By the end of day one as a 50, I had discovered the daily quests on Ilum, did them, and had enough badges to buy a rank 126 guardian hilt from the daily vendor, which of course I did. Why do I have this trade skill again? Is it for the crystals? Maybe, but I really only need one of those, and they’re also going to get replaced very, very soon by drops in hard modes and raids. Personally, I’ve already replaced the crystal I could craft with a Magenta one I had someone else cut, since my guild doesn’t have the endurance recipe yet. Every other recipe on the horizon is similarly useless since lightsabers are already starting to drop with better crystals than what can be crafted.

 

Is it the enhancements, the shields? Nope, they all suffer the same problems. I can replace anything I can craft with a single days worth of dailys, save perhaps the shield. I had to wait for my first raid right, on Normal, to replace that. Weigh that against the time it took for me to just proc the right recipe and it makes me wonder why I bothered.

And since everyone else is in the same boat too (they’ll have better items than craftables shortly after being 50), there’s no decent point for them to buy my wares on the GTN. So the answer isn’t “commerce” either.

 

The craftable lightsabers were automatically useless before I even had the ability to make them. They take ingredients from hard modes, but are lightsabers for a level 48. Am I supposed to blow a bunch of them up to proc an artifact variety? That just puts me back at the beginning, since even an artifact-quality versions of these sabers would be obsolete after week one as a 50. Near as I can tell, these recipes exist to tease me.

 

If my trade skill does nothing for me at 50, then it must have been for 1-49. If it’s just for 1-49, why bother? The bonus it confers to me while leveling isn’t that high, and this is not where we’re going to spend the overwhelming majority of our time anyway, so again, what’s the point?

 

My trade skill needs to confer some bonus to me at 50, even if it’s not straight-up gear. I get that if we put rank 200 artifacts in everyone’s recipe book then suddenly no one has a reason to do anything. To use everyone’s favorite/most hated comparison, in WoW, being a blacksmith didn’t mean I could make my tank the best gear in the game or that what I could craft at 50 would last terribly long (it wouldn’t). But it did mean I could add an extra socket to my bracers and gloves, and this is a genuine bonus that 1, will always be with me and useful and 2, differentiates my character from other warriors, which is another goal trade skills ought to have. If being an artificer makes me no different than being a synthweaver, why bother with either?

 

Frankly, this whole genre has some problems that it can’t seem to shake because “it’s always been done this way.” Leveling is an elongated tutorial that’s supposed to teach me how to play the game, and SWTOR just doesn’t do this. But, to be fair, no MMO I’ve played did either.

 

I’ll confess, I’m a space bar spammer. I just want my damn objectives so I can get back to combat, drops, exploration, the things that make up an MMORPG for me. Am I saying this to say “story is stupid”? No way. I’m telling you I don’t care at all about story (you heard me) so the following has greater impact.

 

The Bioware story presentation is great and I love it, and I don’t even care about these things. How can I mean this?

 

Even if you’re spamming over story as fast as you can, eventually you get to some moments that you just can’t pass. “Wait, what did he say about Kira? And why does she look so angry?” Suddenly, I’m sucked in, even if only for a bit, and only because I’m curious about Kira, my coolest companion.

 

But the bottom line is, even if you couldn’t care less about story, having the option to listen to it from an animated character beats the heck out of a block of text delivered by a statue. I think even the most hardnosed story hater would have to agree with this.

 

I’m not defending any of the actual stories in the game, their presentation, voice acting, animation, or any of that. I’m just saying, all things being equal, it beats text.

 

So... then why is this approach used exclusively for story and not for the game or teaching me how to play the game?

 

Story is great, but let’s get this straight: this is a video game. I’m not here for a story, I’m here for gaming. If you’d like to serve me some story along-side my gaming, great! That’s just cheese on my hamburger, and I love it. But this game is more like a grilled cheese sandwich with a Steak-Um inside. It’s still delicious, but it’s not a hamburger, which is kinda what I wanted for dinner tonight.

 

If you went to the movies to be told a story, and halfway through a Game-Boy popped up from your seat and said “You have to beat this Mario level before I’ll show you the rest of the movie,” you’d be mighty aggravated. The people in a movie theater are out for a story and the people logged on to an MMO are out for a game. Serve them story all you like, but the story needs to serve the game and not the other way around. If you want to hand me a free Game-Boy when I exit the theater, that's also great.

 

The audio presentation, which consumed a massive amount of this game’s resources, is used exclusively for story. And again, no matter where you want to rank story in your personal priority list, it’s not #1. That’s gaming by definition.

 

When it comes time to learn how to play, I’m in the Codex. Reading. How can this be? Why did no Jedi Master at the Temple have a quest in which he taught me the nature of “Threat”? What the heck is threat? Yeah, I know what threat is, but only because I’ve played a lot of MMOs before. Does that mean you should, as game designers, assume this knowledge for everyone? Only if the only players you want to attract are ones who already understand these concepts, and never anyone new.

 

And the NPC wouldn’t have to break any Fourth Walls to get the job done. You click on Master So-And-So, much like you would for the quests where you just kill a few training robots, only this time we’ll do one of those nice scripted sequences we currently waste on story you’ll only see once.

 

Did I say “waste”? Yes. I’m going to experience the story once. I’m going to play a long, long time. Where should the time go again?

 

So Master So-And-So says something like this:

 

“As you advance in your career you may fight along-side other Jedi or soldiers of the Republic, occasionally with several of you on the same, large target. Let’s face it, it’s the only way to stop some of the bigger threats out there; no single hero is going to get the job done, and we shouldn’t expect them to. Teamwork is almost always preferable.

 

“And, when on the battlefield with others and ganging up on a single, monstrous target, who will that target attack? Will it be you? Your friend? We don’t have to wait and see. Part of the skills of the Jedi Guardian is the ability to appear to be the biggest threat on the battlefield, while not necessarily being so. No, what she needs to be is the sturdiest target on the battlefield, so she can withstand the onslaught she’s about to try and keep coming.

 

“To this end, we have a number of abilities which make us appear much more threatening than our comrades-in-arms, which should keep the target or targets focused on us, which is our primary job. Our secondary job is surviving it.”

 

If this is anywhere in the game, it’s in the codex, and it’s probably not in there either. What we do get is a vague description that the role “tank” (“Tank? What?!”) is concerned with “protecting his group mates.” Then we get skills that say “causes a high amount of threat,” or “forces enemy to attack you for 6 seconds,” and we’re supposed to work it all out from there. For those of you, like me, who are old MMO hands, this may all sound insane, but please just try to think back. How did you learn this stuff? Either a friend taught you, or you read a web site. WoW certainly didn’t teach you how to tank or heal or when you should AoE vs. focus fire. You had to learn that stuff the long way. No one say “the hard way,” just the long and inexplicable way. If I have to go outside of your game to learn how to play your game, then your game is failing me as a new player.

 

What other genre of video game does this to you? When I play StarCraft, I don’t just get a new unit with a tooltip and a hearty “Good luck!” You can be sure that, if I just got a new unit, the very next level is going to feature it heavily. I’ll need to use it to win. In addition and even more importantly, an NPC is going to be along very shortly with some of that voice acting we’re all so fond of, and he’s going to explain to me what this unit does, what it’s good and bad against, and anything else I might need to know. It is everything, all knowledge about this unit and every situation I can possibly use it well in? No. But it’s something, and it’s certainly not next-to-nothing, a tooltip with a word in it no one had bothered to define for me yet. Minimally, I know what my new ability is and I have a decent description of what to do with it.

 

I’m just getting started here, but let me summarize a few things we have so far:

 

The game was crafted largely as a “Knights of the Old Republic” game. Yeah, it’s an MMO. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying it’s not enough of one. Too much went into 1-49, which we can almost call “the single player portion.” Meanwhile, game designers really need to wake up. Leveling is a relic from Dungeons and Dragons that works fine when six guys all agree to meet at the same table once a week. In 2012 and on the internet, it’s a relic that's holding us back. We do need a tutorial period to learn a game of this complexity, but that’s not the game. It’s how we learn our characters and how to play them. The bulk of the game is ahead, or should be.

 

Since 1-49 is a tutorial, make it one. Teach your new players how to play or you’ll have to be happy with never attracting anyone new to this genre. Yeah, some are going to come for your peerless ability to tell a story in an RPG. And when that’s done, then what? They’re adrift. They suddenly need a group and no one has taught them group mechanics. At all. Then old timers like me get pissed and throw them out of our hard mode.

 

The story in WoW sucked, not because it wasn’t well written. I wouldn’t actually know. It sucked because it didn’t impact my game experience one bit. It was just text I could ignore. Now I’m in love with Kira Carson, damn you people. How about we put a stimulus this powerful to work on gaming in addition to story telling?

 

Coming up next, your talent trees are dull and contain no real choices to make. The gear system is almost the greatest item system in an MMO, ever… then it says “Nah, never mind. I was just teasing.” Emulating WoW Is a great idea since it’s a great game with a huge audience. Emulating WoW 1.x – 2.x? Not so much.

Edited February 10, 2012 by JustTed

[Postalz]

I have 8 gigs of ram 2 gig video card top end video graphics etc and run everything on max settings. The game world is beautiful to say the least. So do yourself a favor and upgrade your PC, it's well worth it. You'll thank me later, and no worries you're more than welcome =)

 

But on a serious note I agree that endgame is lacking. As much as I love huttball I really want arenas otherwise I don't see this game holding my interest much longer.

[JustTed]

But on a serious note I agree that endgame is lacking. As much as I love huttball I really want arenas otherwise I don't see this game holding my interest much longer.

 

PvP is a whole other can of worms which I was going to save for another post, but based on the attention spans here...

 

I'm really interested in Bioware seeing the above. I already figured the peanut gallery would just spam a lot of TLDRs.

[uteboy]

I read the whole thing. I thought it was well written, though I'm not going to respond to it all.

 

 

I see the problem as you can't release a game without significant leveling content, and you can't release a game without significant end game content. And it's very difficult to have the resources to do both.

 

 

Personally I think the current paradigm of 0-max level then repeat top level content over and over is done. It needs something new. Unfortunately what that "something" is I have no idea.

 

That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but I know what I mean.

[JustTed]

I see the problem as you can't release a game without significant leveling content, and you can't release a game without significant end game content. And it's very difficult to have the resources to do both.

 

If we had to pick between the two, which should it be? This seems self-evident to me. We're going to spend the overwhelming majority of our time at 50, not getting there. If there's to be an uneven distribution of development resources, the lion's share needs to get spent on the endgame.

 

Personally I think the current paradigm of 0-max level then repeat top level content over and over is done. It needs something new. Unfortunately what that "something" is I have no idea.

 

Me either, but I wonder why we have "levels" to begin with. If they want to dole out abilities slowly they can gate them in other ways.

 

That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but I know what I mean.

 

No, I get you, and articulating the problem is a whole lot easier than crafting the solution.

[Keta]

My smart arsed answer for the open is please give me the Cliff Notes version. Lots of interesting dialog in there though. As for end game, back when. I could still play (that would be Monday pre UI), alts were my end game. My unusual work schedule and time zone don't really allow me to be reliable raider for the rest f the guild.

[dipstik]

Cool novel bro.

 

I see your point.

[JustTed]

My smart arsed answer for the open is please give me the Cliff Notes version.

 

Oh, for the love of crumb-cake!

 

Here:

 

The game was crafted largely as a “Knights of the Old Republic” game. Yeah, it’s an MMO. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying it’s not enough of one. Too much went into 1-49, which we can almost call “the single player portion.” Meanwhile, game designers really need to wake up. Leveling is a relic from Dungeons and Dragons that works fine when six guys all agree to meet at the same table once a week. In 2012 and on the internet, it’s a relic that's holding us back. We do need a tutorial period to learn a game of this complexity, but that’s not the game. It’s how we learn our characters and how to play them. The bulk of the game is ahead, or should be.

 

Since 1-49 is a tutorial, make it one. Teach your new players how to play or you’ll have to be happy with never attracting anyone new to this genre. Yeah, some are going to come for your peerless ability to tell a story in an RPG. And when that’s done, then what? They’re adrift. They suddenly need a group and no one has taught them group mechanics. At all. Then old timers like me get pissed and throw them out of our hard mode.

 

The story in WoW sucked, not because it wasn’t well written. I wouldn’t actually know. It sucked because it didn’t impact my game experience one bit. It was just text I could ignore. Now I’m in love with Kira Carson, damn you people. How about we put a stimulus this powerful to work on gaming in addition to story telling?

 

As short as it gets. There was also some stuff on crafting, but I don't want you to hurt yourself.

Edited February 10, 2012 by JustTed

[Samy_Merchi]

Leveling is a relic from Dungeons and Dragons that works fine when six guys all agree to meet at the same table once a week. In 2012 and on the internet, it’s a relic that's holding us back.

Disagree vehemently. Leveling is the fun part. What's the point of continuing to play at 50 when you can't level any more? There is none.

[JustTed]

Disagree vehemently. Leveling is the fun part. What's the point of continuing to play at 50 when you can't level any more? There is none.

 

You already can't level anymore. Are you saying you're in a holding pattern until they lift the cap with an expansion (assuming that's the plan)?

[uteboy]

If we had to pick between the two, which should it be? This seems self-evident to me. We're going to spend the overwhelming majority of our time at 50, not getting there. If there's to be an uneven distribution of development resources, the lion's share needs to get spent on the endgame.

 

Yeah, I see your point here. I'd be curious though how much it is about breaking mind sets.

 

One fundamental rule is that people don't like change. Even if the majority[1] of people who play mmo's spend the majority[1] of their time at end game, if you release a game that has little leveling content, how many will then rag on it simply because it's different?

 

If the answer is lots[1] then how do you convince an investor to give you money for your new concept.

 

 

1. huge assumptions on my part

[Samy_Merchi]

You already can't level anymore. Are you saying you're in a holding pattern until they lift the cap with an expansion (assuming that's the plan)?

 

No, my characters are level 40 and level 4, so they can level and that's why I'm still playing the game. When they hit 50 I don't see any point in playing them so they'll be retired until more content comes out.

[JustTed]

Disagree vehemently. Leveling is the fun part. What's the point of continuing to play at 50 when you can't level any more? There is none.

 

Also, I'm not necessarily saying we should get rid of leveling altogether. I'd say it could stand to be a lot shorter, and yeah, maybe radically redesigned altogether so we could get rid of it.

[Rhila]

Yay annotated!

 

The game was designed with story in mind. So many MMO's focus on boss encounters and groups and etc etc etc. My understand was always that the designers went into this game wanting story to be its main driving force. And so far it really is a nice change for a lot of people. For myself I'm finding I'm more involved in what happens to my characters, and want to know what happens next.

It's like an epic on-line live-action novel. Which is awesome for someone like me.

 

But from what I hear (I have no toons at 50 because I'm addicted to the stories of the classes), end-game instancing is horribly lacking. This is hopefully going to change as the game stays active. But it is only 3 months old, so maybe give it some time to build up end-game and players that enjoy instancing?

[JustTed]

No, my characters are level 40 and level 4, so they can level and that's why I'm still playing the game. When they hit 50 I don't see any point in playing them so they'll be retired until more content comes out.

 

Have you ever had a max level character in an MMO?

 

(Everything can sound like you're a jerk when it's text on an MMO forum. This is just me asking a genuine question though.)

[Samy_Merchi]

Also, I'm not necessarily saying we should get rid of leveling altogether. I'd say it could stand to be a lot shorter

But then we'd have less hours of gameplay for our money. Seems like a bad deal to me.

[Samy_Merchi]

Have you ever had a max level character in an MMO?

A few, but not many.

[cryee]

A lot of people disagree with you about 1-49 being less important than 50. If I get to 50 and there's no more story-driven quests, I'll either make another character and go through their story, or shelve the game.

[JustTed]

Yay annotated!

 

The game was designed with story in mind. So many MMO's focus on boss encounters and groups and etc etc etc. My understand was always that the designers went into this game wanting story to be its main driving force.

 

I think this is a fine goal. But what does this Force Drive?

 

A Game.

 

It's a game first. The story needs to serve the gameplay. I go into this in more detail. Why are there no story elements that teach me how to play, or answer gameplay questions?

 

They use the story to drive the story. How to play is all in the codex. There are other examples.

Edited February 10, 2012 by JustTed

[cdstephen]

good read.

[Jumajin]

Disagree vehemently. Leveling is the fun part. What's the point of continuing to play at 50 when you can't level any more? There is none.

 

No, he is correct. Levelling is a throw-back to D&D.

 

The interesting fact is, a majority of the table-top RPG industry has done away with "level/XP advancement" in that sense, outside of . . . well . . . D&D (which WoTC/Hasbro has owned since 2000), Pathfinder (by Paizo), and a few AD&D retro-clones.

 

Generally, even us RPG designers try to steer away from designing a table-top system that uses Levels/XP as it is considered outdated. Unless, of course, you are the publisher of D&D.

 

There are many other types of advancement systems out there, from what D6 used to what Savage Worlds currently uses, that could be modified slightly to work in any MMO, and provide a better, more fluid experience.

 

If an MMO wants to call itself an MMORPG, get away from the Creature-Kill XP combat, first. That is most definitely a D&D hallmark, and considering that even WoTC markets D&D with a focus on needing miniatures and a battlemap for combat at the table, it tells you something. The concept has gone more wargaming than role-playing game over the past 12-15 years. It's like MMO design is trapped in the early 1980's of RPG design.

[JustTed]

But then we'd have less hours of gameplay for our money. Seems like a bad deal to me.

 

Not at all! We're just going to put those hours at 50, where you spend most of your time.

 

Your character doesn't stop progressing at level 50. Leveling is just replaced with gear progression. You could keep playing a max level character... if it didn't bore you to death.

[Rhila]

I think this is a fine goal. But what does this Force Drive?

 

A Game.

 

It's a game first. The story needs to serve the gameplay. I go into this in more detail. Why are there no story elements that teach me how to play, or answer gameplay questions?

 

They use the story to drive the story. How to play is all in the codex. There are other examples.

 

I was a hardcore raider in WoW for years. And honestly nothing about leveling taught me what I needed to know about my class. I learned it through trial and error at max level. Along with some basic "OMG WHY DID I DO THAT EEEEK" moments.

 

There are people that play for story and only story. They don't give a rats furry little backside about the mechanics of the class, they just care that this button makes that thing EXPLODE!

 

But you also need to remember that there are, and always will be 2 types of MMO players: those that want to learn class mechanics, and those that just want to kill **** with lightening or missiles.

[cdstephen]

Not at all! We're just going to put those hours at 50, where you spend most of your time.

 

Your character doesn't stop progressing at level 50. Leveling is just replaced with gear progression. You could keep playing a max level character... if it didn't bore you to death.

 

Indeed, the issue is that leveling by playing new content is replaced by doing the same 3 warzones and 2 operations over and over again until the next major patch.

 

This isn't good because within a few months, most of a player's time will be spent at max level.

[JustTed]

Generally, even us RPG designers try to steer away from designing a table-top system that uses Levels/XP as it is considered outdated. Unless, of course, you are the publisher of D&D.

 

There are many other types of advancement systems out there...

 

And actually, we already have one. It's gear progression.

 

We all know that knowing I'm level 50 tells you next to nothing. But if I averaged up all the Ratings on my gear and gave you that number (my Character Rating?), that might tell you something more accurate than my level. Not everything, but certainly a lot more detail than "he's 50."

 

Since this is where the game inexorably ends up, why does everything go into the parts I'm going to abandon?