Chapter One: OF COURSE it's the Endgame!

[ExBrillig]

Just wanted to point out that the OP (along with more than a few others), is very wrong on some basic assumptions.

 

The idea that the average player will spend more time at 50 then 1-49 is a distortion based on examination of (relatively) hardcore players.

 

The fact is the majority of players don't play that much. They're the casual players that probably don't even know that there's a forum and have no interest in going to it if they do. These are the players who play months (and even years) without hitting the level cap.

 

These are also the bread and butter of any MMO's customer base.

 

Now TOR is big enough to justify trying to satisfy some of the outliers. But their focus should always be on the story-based, leveling experience: firstly because that's where the money is, but just as importantly, because that's their main differentiator from generic-MMO #366.

[LordTie]

No game can launch with enough content.

[JustTed]

No game can launch with enough content.

 

Sure they could, if they didn't squander all the resources on the part we abandoned.

[JustTed]

Just wanted to point out that the OP (along with more than a few others), is very wrong on some basic assumptions.

 

The idea that the average player will spend more time at 50 then 1-49 is a distortion based on examination of (relatively) hardcore players.

 

I'm a casual player. I haven't logged on in days. But when I do log on, I play my 50.

 

I acknowledged that some people might differ, but that I think most people play MMOs a good long while (at least the good ones), and progressing a character is the goal.

 

I also said, hey, sure you can just levels alts. I just have to wonder why you're not doing that in Dragon Age or Mass Effect since you have no need for a persistent world.

Edited February 18, 2012 by JustTed

[Tairak]

I think the ship has sailed on making this a radically different kind of MMO, and that's fine. I'm not out to reinvent the wheel... here.

 

I'd just like to see the bulk of design, development, art, and all that lovely voice acting, go into the endgame where most of us are going to do most of our playing.

 

I really don´t see how your perfect MMO would look like...

You create a character, play a 20 min tutorial to get all your abilities and then get to an area with progressing dungeons and raids and you spend the rest of your time rerunning the dungeons to get good enough gear to go to the next tier and so on and on ?

 

That sounds really boring to me. If a gearscore is the only form of progression and the whole game just consists of running some instances over and over... well that would not be a game i enjoy.

The normal endgame is ok with me but i like to play all kinds of content. I like to raid on 2 nights a week, i enjoy to run a dungeon now and then and i enjoy leveling up alts and doing the side stuff.

[amnie]

I'm a casual player. I haven't logged on in days. But when I do log on, I play my 50.

 

I acknowledged that some people might differ, but that I think most people play MMOs a good long while (at least the good ones), and progressing a character is the goal.

 

I also said, hey, sure you can just levels alts. I just have to wonder why you're not doing that in Dragon Age or Mass Effect since you have no need for a persistent world.

 

so because you yourself don't play like that it makes 'no sense' that others do?

 

it took me three years to reach the (back then) lvl-cap for final fantasy xi and I never did anything alone, definitely didn't play it as a single player game...

 

everybody should be entitled to play a game whichever way they want to and - like it or not - lots of people don't care about end-game

 

and before you say anything: I do have a lvl 50 character and currently working on getting my next up there to join my folks on Illum with it.

Edited February 18, 2012 by amnie

[DarthKhaos]

Who needs a stinkin arena when we got a FFA PvP Zone!!!

 

Oh look It's Empire (if you're on Republic). Then stab em in the back. ~evil chuckle~

[GavNash]

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.

 

Good constructive post, I agree with much of it.

[Forsbacka]

Just wanted to point out that the OP (along with more than a few others), is very wrong on some basic assumptions.

 

The idea that the average player will spend more time at 50 then 1-49 is a distortion based on examination of (relatively) hardcore players.

 

The fact is the majority of players don't play that much. They're the casual players that probably don't even know that there's a forum and have no interest in going to it if they do. These are the players who play months (and even years) without hitting the level cap.

 

These are also the bread and butter of any MMO's customer base.

 

Now TOR is big enough to justify trying to satisfy some of the outliers. But their focus should always be on the story-based, leveling experience: firstly because that's where the money is, but just as importantly, because that's their main differentiator from generic-MMO #366.

 

According to research made about average weekly gametime of MMORPG players was 21.7 hours which prolly takes most people to 50 in few weeks.

[Megaphys]

long post, i read some skimmed some, initially i was agreeing with you, but when you went into the whole ignore all story thing, i was like, oh this is an rpg, it was billed as such, rpgs are actually games you know, a decent amount of people like being a part of a story and doing stuff in that framework.

 

regardless though, i agree that a game that wants people to keep playing, has to have some mechanics that dont get old very easily. The dailies being boring is spot on, in fact i was a bit surprised with some of what they chose as dailies, they had some more interesting other quests, that you might have to repeat like 5 times before they bore you greatly, instead of most of them that they chose that you never have any desire to do again ever.

 

crafting is also illogical, but i think this occured as a last ditch change when they decided raids should have the best gear, i mean a lot of the schematics exist in the dats for stuff we cant make.

 

My solution? get rid of the gear focus of progression for endgame content. Give people skills, traits and abilities directly to their charachters for their work. IE beat the boss, you have a chance to gain "insight" or "understanding" do it repeatedly and some one who is more knowledgeable (npc) can give you "insight" which you can use to get traits for your charachter like say, dmg reduction, shorter cool downs, even new skills. Its essentially the same as gear, however it doesnt bump heads with crafting it also doesnt burn up your inventory. Crafting should be controlling the effects and looks related to items. There is no reason to have a crafting system at all if it cant give you gear in the end, or customize your looks.

 

Its like become a master crafter if you wish, but realize you will never make anything as good as "insert raid drop here"

 

I also think it would be more fun, and logical for raids to give skills and traits, and you learn certain things from certain encounters, rather than it magically drops a bunch of items it should never have had, escpecially in a game with jedi, you mean a jedi is only as good as his robes?

[TheSwamper]

According to research made about average weekly gametime of MMORPG players was 21.7 hours which prolly takes most people to 50 in few weeks.

 

That's only if you also assume they play only one character.

 

I have played every day since release, some days many hours, and I don't have a 50 yet. I do have a 47, 43, 37, 36, 32, etc.

 

Why? I enjoy leveling. I like it better than the endgame. I very much enjoy character progression, and at endgame, that progression is either too slow (most MMOs) or over too fast (from what I've read about TOR's endgame).

 

While leveling, my characters regularly and frequently get gear upgrades, and ability upgrades.

 

In almost every MMO it's the endgame I like the least, because if you want to continue character progression, you have to jump on this once a week treadmill, and hope the RNG likes you that day.

 

Really, what this post comes down to, is the old journey vs the destination argument. There's no correct answer for that, except to say, to each his own.

 

So, for this player, it's certainly NOT all about the endgame.

Edited February 18, 2012 by TheSwamper

[JustTed]

Why? I enjoy leveling. I like it better than the endgame. I very much enjoy character progression, and at endgame, that progression is either too slow (most MMOs) or over too fast (from what I've read about TOR's endgame).

 

MMOs are about having a persistent world, a world that exists independent of you. If there's no persistent world, then it might as well be a single player game, or a Diablo-style multiplayer romp

 

Leveling a character, then throwing it away when it hits 50, is the opposite of persistence. You don't need an MMO for this, you could just play an RPG.

 

It's not "to each his own." You're taking the one of the defining features of the MMO, persistence, and throwing it away. Okay, but that just strikes me as crazy.

[Dumpiduke]

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.

 

I respectfully disagree with you on this one. The reason I say that is because IF the leveling content isn't good enough, fewer people would bother to stick around for the end game. This happened to me with Rift. I had absolutely no desire to level to cap in that game because it was so unoriginal. I think I made it to level 14 before I said "well, I'm not going to do this all over again in a game that's not as good as its primary model." So I didn't, and I quit.

 

I think Bioware did the right thing in devoting a good portion of resources to the leveling experience. Perhaps a strong leveling experience is what is needed to attract new customers to the MMO market. I think TOR has a lot of life left in it still and it's going to be exciting to see where Bioware takes it. 1.2 is going to be a huge deal, let's hope that it delivers and shows us what we can expect our money to buy us.

 

Furthermore, from this point forward, the majority of the new content that will be released is going to be end game focused. The leveling experience is already there (although i definately feel that it could use some variety added.) I don't think we can fault Bioware for trying to be different in making the leveling experience more rewarding and engaging. I think they succeeded and with a bit more work, leveling an alt will be a joy rather than a chore.

Edited February 21, 2012 by Dumpiduke

[Monitorguy]

First off its calls end game. You know stuff to do why the game is over and u are sitting around for the next big updates to the game. Also one easy way to fix this is well make the game part last long with slower xp. That way there is more hours in the Game and well less hours in the End game . I mean it is called a end game

[gurugeorge]

That's only if you also assume they play only one character.

 

I have played every day since release, some days many hours, and I don't have a 50 yet. I do have a 47, 43, 37, 36, 32, etc.

 

Why? I enjoy leveling. I like it better than the endgame. I very much enjoy character progression, and at endgame, that progression is either too slow (most MMOs) or over too fast (from what I've read about TOR's endgame).

 

While leveling, my characters regularly and frequently get gear upgrades, and ability upgrades.

 

In almost every MMO it's the endgame I like the least, because if you want to continue character progression, you have to jump on this once a week treadmill, and hope the RNG likes you that day.

 

Really, what this post comes down to, is the old journey vs the destination argument. There's no correct answer for that, except to say, to each his own.

 

So, for this player, it's certainly NOT all about the endgame.

 

Agree with this. Posts like the OP just want the game to adapt to them, rather than them adapting to the game.

 

People say SWTOR is like WoW, people say SWTOR is not enough like WoW. Actually it's bit like WoW in some respects but it's its own game.

 

There are 8 unique, long stories in this game, with a lot of variation. Why you wouldn't want to experience all of them is a mystery to me.

 

The only downside is the same places you're going through, but by no means do you have to "do all the side-quests again", you can mix and match with each toon. Class quest plus zone quest, class quest plus side quests, class quest plus heroics, class quest plus Flashpoints, class quest plus space combat, or any combination of these.

 

By the time you've played through several classes and gotten a feel for what you really enjoy playing, THEN is the time to settle on one toon, and by then BW are likely to have pumped up endgame content to a more satisfactory level.

 

Of course the endgame has to be fleshed out, but never in the history of themepark MMOs has an MMO ever released with a fully-fleshed-out endgame. That comes with time, it comes with devs getting a feel for what people want.

 

The amount of tantrumish footstamping on these boards is sickening.

 

"I want it all NAAAAOWWW or else I shall POST and POST and POST!!!!"

 

Yuck.

Edited February 21, 2012 by gurugeorge

[GalacticKegger]

MMOs are about having a persistent world, a world that exists independent of you. If there's no persistent world, then it might as well be a single player game, or a Diablo-style multiplayer romp

 

Leveling a character, then throwing it away when it hits 50, is the opposite of persistence. You don't need an MMO for this, you could just play an RPG.

 

It's not "to each his own." You're taking the one of the defining features of the MMO, persistence, and throwing it away. Okay, but that just strikes me as crazy.

Well, someone's figured it out.

Are you 10/10 on nightmare(kp,ev)? You arn't done, thats content you havnt experienced- you havnt fought the rancor, you havnt fought the lava demon, you havnt solved the jungle puzzle, you havnt solved the robot puzzle, you havn't learned to manage soa's lightning balls, you havnt learned to mow the lawn with karaga's napalm.

 

Hardmodes are what you do to prepare yourselves for them, each hardmode has its own piece of gear, once you have the set pieces picked out, you will need to accumulate a second set's worth of gear to scrounge for the modules that you really want to be in them. More importantly, hard modes is where you make friends, establish yourself as being good at your role, demonstrate your capability to figure out (or research) what is happening in a fight, to keep a cool head when things go wrong and to lead.

 

End game is fine. Varied, challenging, enthralling. Bugs are being fixed and the player base is slowly learning how to do ilum right (large packs of roving zergs vying for assault points).

Edited February 21, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[mangarrage]

My belief is that its all in the levelling curve.

This one aspect of the newer mmos since 2004. It hasnt as you said always been like that but it has been like that since 2004

 

When you increase the speed to cap all other aspects of the game pretty much become meaningless

 

You talk about crafting and yes it is ruined in this game and useless why? because why would anyone buy a piece of gear that will be useless the day after? Or that they can get a better piece with daily commedations on the planet they are on?

Crafting is ruined because of the rate of levelling

Basically with as fast as you can get to cap in games today the crafting should start at 50

 

Now what if it took longer to level.

All crafting becomes viable

 

I really dont want to write a novel about this

But if companies continue to make games where in literally days you can achieve max level then they will in essence always suck because so much goes into the levelling processes as far as development and time and its a blink of the eye for most people, and in turn there is no end game because all the time gets put into the levelling process which takes no time at all

[GalacticKegger]

My belief is that its all in the levelling curve.

This one aspect of the newer mmos since 2004. It hasnt as you said always been like that but it has been like that since 2004

 

When you increase the speed to cap all other aspects of the game pretty much become meaningless

 

You talk about crafting and yes it is ruined in this game and useless why? because why would anyone buy a piece of gear that will be useless the day after? Or that they can get a better piece with daily commedations on the planet they are on?

Crafting is ruined because of the rate of levelling

Basically with as fast as you can get to cap in games today the crafting should start at 50

 

Now what if it took longer to level.

All crafting becomes viable

 

I really dont want to write a novel about this

But if companies continue to make games where in literally days you can achieve max level then they will in essence always suck because so much goes into the levelling processes as far as development and time and its a blink of the eye for most people, and in turn there is no end game because all the time gets put into the levelling process which takes no time at all

My toons make a killing on the GTN. Striking the credit expense balance between repairs, crafting missions & training can be a bit of a challenge. But that's not a bad thing, though I find that GTN sales essentially fund my crafting.

 

The leveling up part is the player's choice. After level 20 it takes 4 or 5 hours per level of straightforward gaming (exploring, farming, side quests, playing along with the VA quests, etc.) to level up. That is unless the player either power levels (skipping most everything for the sake of gaining levels) or uses speed hacks. While the game allows for power leveling, that play style is an ill fit. The game accomodates it but wasn't designed for it.

 

WoW has become the king of speed (portals everywhere, BoA heirlooms, DF & RF for insta-gearing, 400% movement rates with epic mounts & guild perk bonuses, etc.) whose rushing people into end game was somehow ordained as an industry standard. The game shrunk because of it. BioWare stated that they studied other MMO's successes and failures. I'm sure choosing to focus on not going down that road came as a result of those studies.

Edited February 22, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[GnatB]

Of course it isn't the endgame.

 

How long will I spend 1-50? Couple of months, at least. Started playing in December, 1 character at 41, 2 at 22. How many days will I spend at "endgame"? 0. *if* I ever reach endgame I'll start a different game until the next expansion.

 

"endgame" is a holding pattern. It's entire purpose is to slow down players who got through the real content too quickly to keep them from dropping subs. And, of course, most of them haven't even SEEN most of the content. As far as I'm concerned, Bioware has already spent too MUCH time on worthless endgame content.

 

For some reason, some small (and yes, it is small... but vocal) percentage of the population see end-game as the actual "Game" in MMORPG's. The fact that there hasn't yet been a successful game that is just "endgame" style gameplay should be indicitive of the fact that it actually isn't THAT popular.

[GnatB]

TLDR - Once you hit 50 things get boring fast

 

Correction. Once you finish the game, things get boring fast. To which I say. DUH. Level (i.e. being 50) is immaterial. The game finishes once you finish your class questline(s). (which happens to happen around lvl 50)

 

How fun was ME2 after you finished it? How fun was pretty much ANY game after you finished it? No fun at all.

 

I, personally, have no problem with people dropping subs once they finish... (though I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe anybody has actually finished all 8 class questlines) If they've raced through the content to get to the boring end game (a.k.a. gear grind) content, without actually taking the time/intent to enjoy the actual content... That's there own stupid fault. They'll probably get bored quickly with whatever they pick up next and possibly come back to enjoy the actual content that is here.

[gurugeorge]

Of course it isn't the endgame.

 

How long will I spend 1-50? Couple of months, at least. Started playing in December, 1 character at 41, 2 at 22. How many days will I spend at "endgame"? 0. *if* I ever reach endgame I'll start a different game until the next expansion.

 

"endgame" is a holding pattern. It's entire purpose is to slow down players who got through the real content too quickly to keep them from dropping subs. And, of course, most of them haven't even SEEN most of the content. As far as I'm concerned, Bioware has already spent too MUCH time on worthless endgame content.

 

For some reason, some small (and yes, it is small... but vocal) percentage of the population see end-game as the actual "Game" in MMORPG's. The fact that there hasn't yet been a successful game that is just "endgame" style gameplay should be indicitive of the fact that it actually isn't THAT popular.

 

Well this isn't quite true.

 

If you think about an online FPS, that's all "endgame" basically. I mean there are some RPG elements even in shooters these days, but mostly it's like chess - all the numbers are equal, and it's just down to player skill.

 

MMORPGs aren't quite the same, because, as you say, a huge part of the RPG experience is BUILDING your character, and adventuring with your character through that development.

 

But it's not right to say that endgame has no place in MMOs either, or that they're just a "holding pattern". A lot of people love their "mains", and want to have stuff to do with them. PvP endgame is easier for the devs to cope with than PvE because playing against other players is endlessly entertaining anyway. PvE endgame is difficult for the devs because it requires more and more content.

 

But here's the thing. I played WoW for a bit, thought it was a great game, but not my cup of tea lore-wise. I got about half way up the levelling process (35, cap was 60 at the time iirc).

 

But I know people who have played WoW a lot. And what they tell me is that with WoW, most of its content is endgame. That is to say, players who just level won't see most of what WoW has to offer. Over the years, Blizzard have created more and more huge adventures for players at the cap (and they've increased the cap a few times too).

 

That's what retains players.

 

IOW, a good levelling process is what draws players in. There's no doubt SWTOR has that.

 

The question remains, what keeps players committed to the game is endgame. Now SWTOR has more endgame at the moment than WoW did at launch. But, again, there's no doubt BW are going to have to get their fingers out of their asses and start pumping out a humungous amount of endgame content if they want to retain those players who have been attracted by the levelling process. AS WELL AS a constant trickle of more levelling content too.

 

I don't see any reason why BW shouldn't be able to do this, but the size of the task shouldn't be underestimated, or its importance minimized.

Edited February 21, 2012 by gurugeorge

[Meldwyn]

This is a problem I ran into when I was creating my own RPG awhile back. The way I dealt with it was I made the monsters level up with the player - and it worked out really good and made the game a lot more fun.

 

Was your game published? <-- serious question