The Myth of the SW:ToR Story; No it can't support an MMO.

[Jenzali]

^actually, this^

 

Paper and pencil gaming might also suffice. But a computer game will always be "their" story. Even a supposedly open-ended game like Skyrim is essentially just playing several different alts (mage's college, warrior's guild, assassin's guild, thieve's guild, etc.).

 

Ask the many players on the Roleplay servers and they'll tell you that isn't the case. You can make your own story even if this isn't a sandbox MMO.

[Dawgtide]

There you go. I can understand not being into the whole gear grind aspect of mmo's. To be honest even most people who engage fully in it don't like it much. It's a means to an end really for them. And yes the "core story" is all your really interested in after seeing some of the dialogue options 5-6 times....

 

I also have had a lot of people I leveled with just float off because this is basically a finger paint version of an mmo at the moment. When the bugs are also taken into consideration it starts to get boring fast. I'm glad your enjoying the game.

 

But that is BW fear. They've written a single player game into a very badly purposed mmo framework. People leave mmo's because they burn out genrally. Not because they've run all the sotries. The former guaranteeing a long shelf life. The later will have subs for 4-5 months then people dump it after all the fun stuff is done. What ever mmo elements are missing (and a lot are suggested elsewhere on the forums) its missing in spades and it's just a shame. It still has a lot of potential I'm just not sure BW can deliver. They are apparently the story guys. Not the mmo guys....

 

Nevermind, it didn't copy the guy saying he wanted a main that he could put time into and get better.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Dawgtide

[Dawgtide]

15 alts...

how about GET A JOB!

if you have that much time on your hands to play 15 alts then quite possibly you have no life and need a job, or a girlfriend/boyfriend or somethig to do with the rest of the 24 hrs in the day.

get a grip people....you need to "level" your real life first.

this game (yes it is a game, some of you find that hard to believe) comes second.

My gosh already people get a friggin life!

 

Heres a revelation....if it isnt fun DON'T DO IT!

QUIT

It may just motivate all of you to explore your real lives.

Or manifest one.

Something!

 

This too, no doubt about that.

[Evensong]

I think that BioWare created a very special game, and not sure how anybody can complain about re-playability. You have 8 different stories here. In every other game there are only few quests that are specific to classes and they are mostly a great bore. Go ahead and level 8 characters in EQ2 for example... pure grind...

 

When first time me and my friend started questing together and I noticed that there are different dialogs just because there were two of us and that NPCs actually were noticing that, I was amazed. It is so absolutely unique and great it makes me want to do the same quests alone and in company just so I can see these differences.

Like the quest you get from the Intelligence in entrance to Kaas City (Spy quest) and he says wow there are more of you here LOL. He was so surprised /grin.

 

I love the game, I love my companions and their unique characters... I hope BioWare will continue to add more story and more Voice Over and cut scenes as this is what makes this game so attractive.

From what I see devs are doing, they actually listen to players.

 

I am here for as long run...

[RodneyMmKay]

I agree with you, I think the difference in our opinions stems from the fact that you are looking at the bugs that need to fixed in the content that we do have and I am looking at the content and criticizing that.

 

I just find a lot of the endgame is place (as far as I am concerned) outside of the game itself, none of it is part of the game. The levelling should lead to the end game and PvP ect without missing a stride but it doesn't, it feels like getting to the end of a movie and the sequel is presented as a synopsis.

 

They have indeed created 2 games under 1 label, they have catered for those that want to run an RPG story, those that want to PvP and those that want to raid but completely overlooked the fact that this is a single game and there are a lot of people that want to play the game in it's entirety and they need a smooth transition into all of the other aspects of it.

 

That's actually a very good framing of the problem.

 

Although bugs are a feature of disscontent they are not the whole story at all for me. It's full lack of areas found in most other mmo's that I've always enjoyed and helped create the social culture that made mmo's for me.

 

I think the real dividing line between our views (although I like and appreciate yours) is the fact that the virtual environment of MMO's are only ever half the story of why an mmo "takes off" for me. There has to be enough technical meat and challenge to interest people, and how those people use that information in their interactions IS mmo for me.

 

This game seems to take a very "brush everything under the carpet" approach to information. I can't think of anything more antithetical to an mmo mindset than to say to people "You will have no useful information" Just watch the pretty lights and obey our visual ques. (Which hopefully work).

 

The virtual environment is only ever half the story of an mmo. The other half is the meat and bone of the game you give to the community and what it produces in return.

 

This is a consumer product designed to be enjoyed for an hour before you go to work or for kids who like company while they play or....

 

If an mmo is a 30 course meal that might just eat you; swtor is just a microwave meal. And I don't want to pay for another 6 months to find out if they can do it when there are a couple other really good mmo's that have targeted my group (possibly). And I can only do one.

 

SWTOR had and has (possibly) huge potential. It's just that "possibly" gets larger as the months go on not smaller.

[Seregul]

15 alts...

how about GET A JOB!

if you have that much time on your hands to play 15 alts then quite possibly you have no life and need a job, or a girlfriend/boyfriend or somethig to do with the rest of the 24 hrs in the day.

get a grip people....you need to "level" your real life first.

this game (yes it is a game, some of you find that hard to believe) comes second.

My gosh already people get a friggin life!

 

Heres a revelation....if it isnt fun DON'T DO IT!

QUIT

It may just motivate all of you to explore your real lives.

Or manifest one.

Something!

 

Go back and read all the words before "15 alts".

[Cordelia]

Star Wars is not the universe for slapstick comedy, as evident from the ever-despised Jar Jar Binks. If you don't get subtle comedy than perhaps you should treat the Star Wars series as more of a hard drama than anything else.

 

Not sure I would entirely agree with that. There is often quite a bit of slapstick comedy involving C-3PO and R2-D2. Take for example in Attack of the Clones, in the arena R2 pulls C-3PO's head along and C-3PO says, 'What a drag'. Also another scene where he says, 'I'm quite beside myself'. That's pretty slapstick and definitely not subtle.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Cordelia

[Shaso]

Actually they took the RPG out, you dont roleplay and create your character, you are told a story, Bioware claims that it is my story but it is not, its Biowares story.

 

Very well said.

[halorix]

Actually they took the RPG out, you dont roleplay and create your character, you are told a story, Bioware claims that it is my story but it is not, its Biowares story.

 

Someone mistakes tabletop RPG for video game RPG.

[RodneyMmKay]

I think that BioWare created a very special game, and not sure how anybody can complain about re-playability. You have 8 different stories here. In every other game there are only few quests that are specific to classes and they are mostly a great bore. Go ahead and level 8 characters in EQ2 for example... pure grind...

 

When first time me and my friend started questing together and I noticed that there are different dialogs just because there were two of us and that NPCs actually were noticing that, I was amazed. It is so absolutely unique and great it makes me want to do the same quests alone and in company just so I can see these differences.

Like the quest you get from the Intelligence in entrance to Kaas City (Spy quest) and he says wow there are more of you here LOL. He was so surprised /grin.

 

I love the game, I love my companions and their unique characters... I hope BioWare will continue to add more story and more Voice Over and cut scenes as this is what makes this game so attractive.

From what I see devs are doing, they actually listen to players.

 

I am here for as long run...

 

Completely fair comment. And some of those times sounded great! But...I guess it's just not enough for me I'm starting to think. I didn't realize it wasn't enough when I started but I now do.

 

Unfortunately I can only go through story so many times. There has to be a challenge of some sort to keep some people interested. It wasn't the story that kept me playing mmo's for years and years.

 

Plus there is the issue previously mentioned by someone else. I don't want to pay a subscription for a book I read new chapters in as I faceroll through content and alts that get increasingly easy to level. Which is what the Legacy system will do. It's kind of silly in a way. It will burn people through low level content faster (where BW put all their money) and get them to their alt max quicker leaving nothing but whatever endgame they have to pick up the slack. Which at the moment it does not do. Endgame is a ghost town.

 

The issue to me is simple. Every company is switching to a sub basis strategy because its good money. I don't mind paying money to test me and my friends abilities against content, I do however mind paying money every month just to read a serialized comic.

 

I payed about $140 for the game then lets say I do a year. That's about $320 just for mostly story updates. Like someone said before. If you want to sell me a story then write the game. But don't try and take me for mmo money every month when all your doing is running a serialized comic for my alt farm house.

 

I didn't realize it but constructing an alt farm house is not what I played mmo's for. But it seems this is all this game is designed to do. I spend about 90% of my time on alts in this game. At most this is a leveling game with story. But it's certainly not an mmo yet I feel.

 

I say this fully having enjoyed those things you mentioned. But for $320 for my first year I would prefer a gaming challenge rather than new dialogue options in leveling quests.

 

I think SWTOR is trying to be too much to too many people. And all I've noticed is the people who play mmo's have left or are leaving or just waiting to see what happens in Patch 1.2. That is not hyperbole just my personal experience of the game.

 

All of them say the same things about what's wrong with it and then usually end on the same deffinition. It's a single player game nested in a social setting. More or less...

 

I loved reading what you wrote though. Reminds me of how I used to feel 8-9 toons ago....

Edited March 23, 2012 by RodneyMmKay

[Lethality]

I tired to play WOW 3 times and never could get past lvl 20. I could not get past the pumpkin picking because I would always think "Whats the *********** point of this lol"

 

When I play SWTOR I still pick pumpkins (shut down generators) but its covered in story. I never think to my self "Whats the *********** point of this" So SWOTORs story allowed to get past lvl 20 and see how brilliant MMOs really are

 

With that said, 3 months from later, Im done with the story. I want endgame content damn it.

 

In Biowares defense, the game is only 3 months old and we are getting a new FP and Operation. If thats the pace they keep, I dont think endgame content will be a problem. An annual expansion would be nice as well.

 

It was covered in the story in WoW too. But you didn't read, did you?

[MXIII]

You cant have your own personal story in an mmo. Thats pretty much the end of it.

[Jandi]

It was covered in the story in WoW too. But you didn't read, did you?

 

This is so true it pains me. I've read every quest text, once and the story and reasons etc are pretty good. It's not a dialogue, but to say there is no story in WoWs quests is simply a lie.

[Asavar]

Actually they took the RPG out, you dont roleplay and create your character, you are told a story, Bioware claims that it is my story but it is not, its Biowares story.

 

 

Refer to your sig.

[Cernow]

You cant have your own personal story in an mmo. Thats pretty much the end of it.

 

Of course you can. You just need to keep the solo storyline part separated from the multiplayer part. Which is what the current class storyline content already does, except it isn't very personalised.

 

You could argue that having significant solo content is inappropriate in a MMO. But MMOs have always had solo content for one reason and another and always will. In which case, might as well make it the best solo content possible (which a more personalised story would help with).

Edited March 23, 2012 by Cernow

[noodlehaus]

Refer to your sig.

 

strong in this one, the fanboy is

[MXIII]

Of course you can. You just need to keep the solo storyline part separated from the multiplayer part. Which is what the current class storyline content already does, except it isn't very personalised.

 

You could argue that having significant solo content is inappropriate in a MMO. But MMOs have always had solo content for one reason and another and always will. In which case, might as well make it the best solo content possible (which a more personalised story would help with).

 

Then you are pretty much making two games. the solo content and the multiplayer content are all part of the overall story...the entire story both solo and multiplayer would have to conform around the players choice, however as soon as you group it no longer is your story, and is now a shared experience between members of the group. Which in the perfect world of MMOS would be awesome, but that was shattered the moment the kill the captain scene was shown to the public and someone asked "What if I dont want to kill the captain?"

 

Not to mention the player base has pretty much decided that it doesnt want choices to keep them from content in the game, therefore killing companions, and not being able to do quest arcs because they made a decision to kill someone who could have appeared somewhere later in the story had to be removed from testing.

 

In the worl dof single player games where you can save your game, this is acceptable. Not so much in an MMO that you pay monthly for. The majority obviously doesnt want to reroll a character to make up the extra content they missed on their first run, thats why it was removed during testing.

[Quantum]

This game uses the WOW model. It's has all of the basic that WOW offers with the exception of some features like RDF and LFR. SWTOR has a better leveling experience thanks to the story and WOW has a better end game experience thanks to those two features. This is the only current thing SWTOR is missing. The game needs more FPs and it needs a RDF. People simply got too used to grouping this way to bother trying to find pugs day in and day out. Once it does have this feature, WOW will have absolutely nothing on SWTOR.

 

Why do people always forget WoW used the EQ model....

Aside that I'm not sure where I sit, I've always have been more of a sandbox player, I don't believe "End Game" is a good concept in any MMO. Something that most games lack is what I like to call a Chaos factor. This factor is global events ran and managed by the developers (or appointed bodies) that are just that game wide, you can avoid them but they add an element of excitement into the game. They don't need more FPs etc. if they would establish a global event system, I mean we're playing in the middle of a galaxy wide war, why can't we be cruising around Tattooine or Taris and walk right into the middle of a surprise attack by the opposing faction? A random element that generates a bit of risk, and actually has an effect on the game world is what this game could use. Imagine if the Imps (NPC's not Players) did a surprise run on Republic Fleet, if they weren't driven back then Fleet is captured until enough players gathered to drive them out, that would be more along what I'm talking about.

 

Personally, I'm taking my time leveling several alts all at once, but once I do hit 50, I do NOT want to spend an hour of my play time every night or more trying to pug a FP. And joining a scheduled guild run doesn't work as work/family prevents me from playing at set intervals at times.

 

This game has to get a RDF feature if it wants to succeed.

 

I like running alts, I don't worry much about "Scheduled Guild Runs" either, the guild I'm running with currently schedules them, but always at times I can't attend. So what.... Nothing is stopping me from getting in Guild chat and saying "Hey who wants to run a HM Foundry". Be a leader once in a while not another sheep in the flock.

[noodlehaus]

Why do people always forget WoW used the EQ model...

 

because people only remember and play the latest and the greatest. nobody can argue that WoW is the best and most successful MMO there is to date. swtor is the latest, but it's not the greatest. at least not yet. but i doubt it'll be.

[Irishbrewed]

Yep, they think we just wanna play alts and act as if the story is even decent....its lame IMO. But was fun while it lasted foresure.

 

I beat the games...

[CorellianWannabe]

No, who is there to do it with you is a huge factor, romances, etc... All because of decisions you made one or two games ago. Did you kill the arachni queen? Did you romance Ashley? Did you let Rex die? Did you choose the Asari or the Geth, etc...

 

Loads of choices, even if the story ends with only a few degrees of separation.

 

Did you choose Anderson to sit on the Council? Too bad, he gave the job to Udina. Did you feed the fish and collect all the model ships? They're worth as much as saving the Collector base. I thought there was a rachni queen regardless-even if you killed it they found another.

 

Besides, given that everyone is dead or a Reaper at the end none of it matters-you get to destroy galactic civilization all because the kid from A.I. says so. Why Shepard should listen to a being that admits to being responsible for more counts of genocide than I can even imagine is not explained.

 

If the story has the same ending regardless, then why bother to make choices? Hmm... doesn't this game do that with the class stories?

[RodneyMmKay]

This too, no doubt about that.

 

The Sims Social = SW:ToR

 

Discuss.

[Lazzer]

That's actually a very good framing of the problem.

 

Although bugs are a feature of disscontent they are not the whole story at all for me. It's full lack of areas found in most other mmo's that I've always enjoyed and helped create the social culture that made mmo's for me.

 

I think the real dividing line between our views (although I like and appreciate yours) is the fact that the virtual environment of MMO's are only ever half the story of why an mmo "takes off" for me. There has to be enough technical meat and challenge to interest people, and how those people use that information in their interactions IS mmo for me.

 

This game seems to take a very "brush everything under the carpet" approach to information. I can't think of anything more antithetical to an mmo mindset than to say to people "You will have no useful information" Just watch the pretty lights and obey our visual ques. (Which hopefully work).

 

The virtual environment is only ever half the story of an mmo. The other half is the meat and bone of the game you give to the community and what it produces in return.

 

This is a consumer product designed to be enjoyed for an hour before you go to work or for kids who like company while they play or....

 

If an mmo is a 30 course meal that might just eat you; swtor is just a microwave meal. And I don't want to pay for another 6 months to find out if they can do it when there are a couple other really good mmo's that have targeted my group (possibly). And I can only do one.

 

SWTOR had and has (possibly) huge potential. It's just that "possibly" gets larger as the months go on not smaller.

 

 

I understand where you are coming from, I think an MMORPG (I've always disliked the shortening of it to MMO, but like I said I'm old school) has 3 pillars that need to keep it running:

 

1) story/mythology; TOR has this in abundance,

 

2) game play and mechanics; this game isn't technical enough, it's too simple and very "cookie cutter".

 

3) Community; we don't have one, this is also (from what friends have told me) the same situation in WoW where people sit in city hubs and wait to be ported into raids and dungeons.

 

Situation 2 can be rectified by programming and patching, I'm not too worried about that.

 

Situation 3 is the largest problem the community has no social feeling, people only do things if they can get XP, loot or some form of reward. For example Ilum (once fixed) has the potential to be the best PvP in the game, but no one will show up simply for fun because grinding warzones gives better rewards.

 

I've seen so many complaints from people trying to change this game to match something that they have played previously, I'd personally like to see Bioware stick with a single philosophy, cater to one play style and do it well. Then let everyone who doesn't like that play style find a game that caters for them.

 

TOR does not have to be the same as every MMORPG, it should be it's own game, I for one would like to be able to look at 3 new MMORPGs and make a choice between different types of game instead of simply different game settings.

[Lazzer]

because people only remember and play the latest and the greatest. nobody can argue that WoW is the best and most successful MMO there is to date. swtor is the latest, but it's not the greatest. at least not yet. but i doubt it'll be.

 

No WoW is the largest and most successful, "best" is subjective. The reason most players forget EQ is that they started with WoW and are simply too young to remember the beginings of EQ.

 

I've avoided WoW due to friends telling me how bad the community is, how easy the game is and the fact that like TOR all of the endgame is instanced with queues and teleports into dungeons and battlegrounds.

 

I find open world games, PvP wise and raid wise, far better than the instanced endgame presented by TOR and WoW.

 

It's one of the reasons I stopped playing LoTRO after the Mirkwood expansion, they made your progression based on instances you could click from your menu options anywhere in the world. The worst thing they did in any game IMO.

[JoanneK]

Personally, and this will be somewhat contentious, I'm of the opinion that SW:ToR is pretty much what LA wanted SW:Galaxies NGE to be, the difference being that we no longer have a sandbox game underneath it.

 

With so much emphasis and development on the 'story' of each character they have made this game little more than playing a literal KOTOR online. A story driven game is fine and will always work on a single player model as there is always a 'finish' point or Game Over point whereby the player has completed everything they feel is relevant and worthwhile to them, but for MMOGs the single player models and directed story models frankly dont cut it as developers cannot create new content as quickly as players can clear it so you end up rushing content - Blizzards Kung-Fu Pandas WoW expansion is a classic example of this. Its perfectly fine to have a story or stories in MMOGs but they cannot ever be the sole focus otherwise you'll end up with a MSOG ('S'ingleplayer) which is pretty much what we have here, I've not come across ANY group play that is required as part of the story. Additonally the crafting system is worthless at max level so we have 100% emphasis on loot farming, this completely undermines any idea or potential for a reasonable player economy, its simply much easier to stuff anything unwanted onto a vendor unless its a friend that has use for it. It seems all development went on the voicing and story aspects of the game it appears, if you take those 2 aspects out of the game there's not a whole lot left.

 

Inevitably this game gets compared to SW:Galaxies as that's the game it pretty much replaced (I played on Ahazi server from 2004 onwards). Now, SWG came out almost a decade ago and tbh looking back SWG was probably 15-20 years ahead of its time, no player level quantifier, a fully player driven economy with item decay (none of this loot-4-life nonsense), massive inter dependance on other classes - wounds anyone? dancer buffs? stat-migration? image design, free-roaming vast landscapes, the best crafting system in any game MMO or otherwise, a talent system that gave the player full control of how they wished to play and lets not forget the Apprentice XP to get your Mastery and a 'luck factor' that was very much subdued/hidden - in the main effort was rewarded not 'luck'. What does this game have that has improved on those aspects? a story? well that depends on what you want from a game.

 

When BW released early details about the classes in the game a couple years ago, I read about the 2 force classes on each faction I almost fell off of my chair, how utterly bizarre!? why out of 8 classes do we need 4 force using classes? and where the hell is imperial trooper? the cracker-messup classes for me are BH and smuggler - they both go where the money is except oh wait, they're faction specific. BW really should have hired Raph Koster as a consultant or something as there are so many amateur errors in game design in this game from the perspective of m'M'og. Depsite this game having some very good points to it, it doesn't look all that different from games 6+years ago, it plays like just about all the other MMOGs out there it just has Star Wars based graphics and sound but the real off-putting aspect to this game is the woeful space combat - Afterburner did it better and that game is ~25yr old, 8 years ago we had the pretty nifty Jump to Lightspeed in SWG, 8 years later we've manage to go back to last century somehow!? I'm confused.

 

Several people have made a key point about lack of community in the game, well thats boils down to evolved definitions of words mMorpg - the big 'M' or Multiplayer used to mean "groups of people" the implication of that is player-to-player cooperation, now it just means "loads of people" where cooperation is optional/voluntary, those that played SWG will know how far a little niceness or nastiness would get ya especially when attempting to aquire a master doc buff. These days there is no reason for people to work together or be nice to each other hence we get games designed the way they are.

 

I've been asked why I play this game, simple answer: it's the only option, wow is just plain aweful, rift is okay but I prefer star wars, yeah I'm a nerdy girl thats been playing games since a binatone console thing in the late 70's, my 1st major game system was when Atari released the 2600 cartridge console, so yeah, I've played alot of games lol. The hard lesson here for anyone developing an MMO(RPG) is you really shouldn't develop a single player game that allows multiple people to play simultaneously without putting a big well rounded sandbox underneath it.

 

What BW have here is a good 1st step with some good points to it but there are several more steps to make/take before this is a good well rounded game: community for one, customization for another (partially addressed in 1.2), space combat: either remove it or change it to something akin to SWG:JTL. But attempting/focusing PVP balance is a great big lose scenario a) its an impossible goal, b) there are far more important issues to resolve/address to avoid this game dying a painful death within 2 years.

 

Just my opinions, take em or leave