I can't seem to level alts... It's frustrating.

[Taroen]

So if you're a raider, like me, once you have content on farm you run out of stuff to do so you level alts. The problem is that leveling in this game is terrible. Hats off to Bioware for adding story to the leveling experience, but I feel like every planet is just another level in a giant rail shooter disguised as an MMO.

 

Does anyone else feel this way, because it strikes me as a fairly big problem and may end up costing BW subs down the road.

 

No, I actually don't feel that way. I've got three 50s now and I've enjoyed making all of them. I like the story lines, and the fact that you can skip the crap that you don't want to do... especially if you pvp. I'm not much for the space missions, but those can be easily used in place of standard missions. I've never played a game where levelling alts was as fun as this one, and I've played pretty much all of them.

 

I'm also a raider, and we have the nightmare modes pretty much to farm status...

 

I can't imagine how levelling in this game could be considered "terrible"... especially compared to other games.

[Turkman]

I think they underestimated the effect different zones have on ones feelings regarding linearity. Other games might not have such good stories but they often have different zones you could level in, which seems to make a huge difference for some of us. Even though you're doing the same thing, killing a tiger in SV always felt better than killing a bear in the plaguelands. And that's because the surroundings were more to my liking.

 

I really miss that choice in this game, however much I like it in other aspects.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Turkman

[Dayfax]

Almost every race has their own questing start zones that links to a few next ones that after a short leveling experience, you can choose to leave and go to another same-faction race' zones and level there instead.

 

there are and were even at release dozens of combinations of areas to level up in. throw in quite a few "dungeons/instances" along the way and you could even level up several of the same class and not repeat the same leveling experience.

Yes some of the quests in every zone were and are "kill x" and "collect y". but change the scenery, audio, loot, quest storylines, and its pretty diverse.

 

Not so in this game. everythings the same for each faction regardless the class EXCEPT the main story, and SLIGHT changes to npc "speech". 98% of the objectives, music/scenery, zone/planets.. quess what? the same.

 

You make some good points. Blizzard was great at creating a variety of environments (Silverpine feels very different than the Barrens) and types of mobs.

 

They -had- to have that, though, to make up for the incredibly shallow gameplay. Some quests where repetitive? C'mon, man, let's be honest. They were -all- repetitive. There's zero difference between the quests you're doing at level 5 and the quests you're doing at level 50. They all fall into 3 categories: FedEx, kill, and escort.

 

Sure, maybe 1 in 20 had a decent story behind them (if you bothered to read the quest text, which very few people did), but that doesn't really make up for the fact that you were doing the exact same thing in the Wetlands as you might have been doing in Darkshire. And once you get past level 25 or so, your choices of viable zones becomes much more limited.

 

SWTOR's design issue is that they didn't tie much of the extra content -- instances and battlegrounds -- to the leveling experience. In WoW, it's very possible that'd you'd wander across the entrances to the Scarlet Monastery and Warsong Gulch very early in the game. There were zone based stories and quests tied to that content, too.

 

In SWTOR, this kind of content is completely segregated from the rest of the experience, so running a dungeon or doing some PvP has to be a conscious choice the requires you to break off any immersion and spend 10 minutes looking at loading screens. It's disconnected and feels bolted on.

 

The voice acting gave SWTOR a distinct selling point, but it also limits what they can do now. Most of the suggestions in this thread would be impossible to implement, because the class stories are directly tied to their respective planets. You can't change the leveling experience without changing the way the class stories work, and that's never going to happen. It'd be far too expensive to implement.

[patchew]

couldnt disagree more, i had 23 level 85s on wow and it was the only thing keeping me going (included with guildchat) because the endgame had become so very very very easy.

Trust me, the alt leveling on swotr is infinitely better. every single class has its own storyline, completely independent of other class storylines. that applies to wow for maybe the first 10 levels then it becomes the same for all. swotr is completely different all the way through to the ending .. love the class endings by the way (a few more options to be truly evil might be hilarious).

wow made things so samey for everybody, swotr doesnt do that. how you kill or adventure for each class is very dependent on spec and class. tanks wade in and use either a healer or dps to help, healers send in a tank first and then pick off the stragglers, dps use tanks to hold off the mobs just long enough to squish em od dps to blow through stuff before they can do much harm.

 

the real truth is, if you rush through th game you miss a massive amount.

if you use the books to tell you where to go, what gear to farm, where the datacrons are etc etc etc ... you will miss out on the adventure of the game.

your loss

[JustTed]

When you leveled alts in WoW you had done it all before, but you still like you were on an adventure. SWTOR feels like a rail shooter.

 

It much more linear that WoW is. At any particular level bracket, say the 40s, you can level effectively in like two or three different zones.

 

SWTOR is a straight line. If you're 40, you're on Hoth, and that's that.

 

There's merits to both, but I like the WoW model better. RPGs, ultimately, should be about making choices.

[Goretzu]

I think they underestimated the effect different zones have on ones feelings regarding linearity. Other games might not have such good stories but they often have different zones you could level in, which seems to make a huge difference for some of us. Even though you're doing the same thing, killing a tiger in SV always felt better than killing a bear in the plaguelands. And that's because the surroundings were more to my liking.

 

I really miss that choice in this game, however much I like it in other aspects.

 

 

 

Yeah the reality was you were doing the same thing...... you just weren't doing exactly the same thing, which makes a difference.

[Mertissielle]

WoW is just as bad as this for levelling. You must just prefer fantasy games than sci-fi. Maybe you should quit and stop posting.

 

Tell me about how WoW has a prescribed list of zones which you much complete chronologically with no opportunity to deviate.

 

It may not be much choice, true, but I can level four different characters to 85 in WoW before I've seen all of the content. In this game, 90% of the quests are the same thing in the same order. Granted the story quest changes and I take the point that sometimes NPCs react differently to you on one class than another but, fundamentally, you're locked into a prescribed list of zones from which you cannot really deviate and it's the same order for every class.

 

In WoW if I decide I can't face seeing Redridge Mountains again I can do the Barrens instead. Maybe instead of pulling out your Dummies Guide to Fanboy Forum Posting you should actually try and think about what it is you're saying.

 

Oh and FYI, if everyone you tell to "go back to WoW" because they dare to have an opinion on this game that is even remotely critical then guess what, you're precious game fails and the servers go offline. Bioware don't want people to go back to WoW, no matter how much you do.

[Thodra]

This is the MMO way my friend. You level up you go to a new zone/planet. Rinse and repeat. On the bright side the stories are all different so that makes it fun for me.

 

I disagree. A good mmo shoulden't be like that. For me it sounds like a poor mmo to me. Look at how SWG did it, you had 1 toon you played for many years. SWTOR... Can't even call it a mmo

[Vhaegrant]

The levelling in SWTOR works fine for me.

 

I've tried to keep a two world gap between alts as I level. This helps to prevent quest familiarity burnout and gives me the choice of world content I want to do.

 

On a personal note, having played GW, WOW and SWG, I've found SWTOR to be the more enjoyable levelling experience. But, YMMV.

[Vinge]

My approach is to have a bit of a gap between all my alt character levels, so they tend to hit the same content a week or so apart.

 

And because I pay so little attention to the quests etc when I'm levelling (I just plough through them on auto-pilot as the content is so trivially easy anyway) it means I've pretty much forgotten about it within a week, so it all feels fairly fresh when I see it again!

[Taroen]

It much more linear that WoW is. At any particular level bracket, say the 40s, you can level effectively in like two or three different zones.

 

SWTOR is a straight line. If you're 40, you're on Hoth, and that's that.

 

There's merits to both, but I like the WoW model better. RPGs, ultimately, should be about making choices.

 

Only because Blizzard greatly increased the XP rates. It wasn't like that until they did that. Now you get so much more XP from any one zone that you can feel free to skip over some, but it was every bit as linear before they changed it, and that was pretty far down the road, too.

[Azzras]

Glad you are having fun but be honest. Outside of class stories quests are probably 80-90% the same.

 

I'll be honest. The action of the quests ie go kill this, collect that, are the same, but the responses from different classes/sex are different.

 

 

A smuggler's response is vastly different than a jedi's response.

[Aloro]

It much more linear that WoW is. At any particular level bracket, say the 40s, you can level effectively in like two or three different zones.

 

SWTOR is a straight line. If you're 40, you're on Hoth, and that's that.

 

There's merits to both, but I like the WoW model better. RPGs, ultimately, should be about making choices.

 

I prefer having more choices. I agree that it's desirable to have more content.

 

It's not true though that every player at lvl 40 is on Hoth. Some might still be finishing up Quesh, and some might have moved on to Belsavis already. Some people might skip everything and just run warzones or space missions. Even now, with the game in its infancy, options exist. Yes, they're few, and yes, I want more.

 

I don't agree that leveling in SWTOR is meaningfully different from leveling in the 25+ MMOs I've played in the last 14 years. In any MMO that has levels, the same basic Diku model has been followed since UO and EQ. The zone design that follows is pretty much the same from game to game; players are guided from one zone to the next, with the intention of steering them towards content that's appropriate for their level. The older a game gets, the more content is available, and the more alternate paths will exist for advancement.

 

LotRO, for instance, was quite linear when it launched. Players had a choice of four starting areas, but after those, everyone was funneled to the same zones, one after another. Years later, there are a lot of options; both alternate activities like skirmishes to provide experience, as well as new zones to adventure in.

 

I am absolutely confident that SWTOR will advance in the same manner. Devs have said that they plan to implement 500 (five HUNDRED) planets in this game. They've also indicated that there are major revamps to space combat coming, and new PvP experiences, meaning we'll have yet more options to advance our characters.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Aloro

[Blacklynx]

I feel the same way. I always level alts wich is why i usually take my time reaching top level in any mmo i play, except if the mmo is too boring, then i just stop paying and go to another game.

 

SWTOR has the class quests wich are unique and the companions, but i'm starting to get really bored when leveling an alt. Knowing that i'm going to a planet and repeat the exact same quests i've already done in another character just makes me think "what the hell am i doing?".

 

BW could (should) have made a story with real decisions/real impact, and it wasn't that difficult, for example:

 

starter planet -> dromund kas -> at the end of the class quest a choice, go to planet x looking for a person OR planet y looking for an object. Depending on choice you would have one planet with it's specific quests and you class quest. -> another choice -> another choice -> etc. To the point where you could make 2 or 3 characters same class but different routes therefore different experience.

 

Choosing planet x instead of y would mean that you would go to planet y in a different act, therefore different class and planet quests.

 

Sure it would have been more time consuming to do it but i doubt anyone would be bored in the 2nd month. Some specific quests for advanced class would be interesting as well.

[Drewser]

I am well aware of that, I played WoW for 5 years or something and I got 6 classes to 80 before I quit during ICC.

 

When you leveled alts in WoW you had done it all before, but you still like you were on an adventure. SWTOR feels like a rail shooter.

 

Not to me. In WoW just like SWTOR, you are doing the sames quests in the same areas again. Nothing adventuring about that.

 

At least with SWTOR, I get a few extra class quests I have not done thrown in.

[gurugeorge]

I'll be honest. The action of the quests ie go kill this, collect that, are the same, but the responses from different classes/sex are different.

 

 

A smuggler's response is vastly different than a jedi's response.

 

Yes exactly, and this occurs quite often even in side quests. Plus companions' side chat is also different.

 

Which makes me doubt some of the claims here to have done tons of alts - if you'd done them, you would have noticed this.

 

Of course you aren't going to notice it if you spacebar through everything either.

 

There's definitely a great divide here, between people who are in it more for the story and immersion (feeling like you're in Star Wars) and people who are in it more for gameplay/competition, for whom story is at best incidental and at worst an annoyance to get through.

 

(Of course not saying I never spacebar side-quests on an alt, occasionally I do - but more often I just follow a different levelling "path", i.e. do more space missions and less side-quests, or do more FPs and less side-quests, etc.)

Edited February 16, 2012 by gurugeorge

[Bluetickone]

Keep in mind that a linear story and freedom of choice when it comes to zones to level in doesn't mix. At all.

 

Not in an MMO at least where zone levels need to be static.

 

meh, its not that bad. class stories take, 30-60 mins tops on a planet.

[ThePromise]

1. Make thread.

2. Sleep.

3. Study.

4. Come back to find 7 page thread.

 

Anyone who said that WoW is exactly like this is incredibly silly, and probably never played in Vanilla or TBC, back when Old World actually meant something and wasn't just a land of, "Dammit, I just want to get to level cap!" (Though that did start to happen in TBC.)

 

Leveling in WoW took you to all kinds of different places, and you could do different things in different zones at the same level. Even in TBC and WotLK when leveling because a long game of completing one quest hub then moving to the next the world was remarkably more open: if you saw a place you could get to it. SWTOR is one giant, completely autonomous Barrens after another.

 

And to the fellow who said I should go play a fantasy MMO, I played EVE, and I did so for quite a while, so I have done the whole Sci-Fi MMO thing before. On a separate note though, I am regretting quitting Rift so soon. If only my RL friends had played it more.