Top 5 MMO's BioWare should model SWTOR endgame after?

[Sabitharan]

So my idea for space combat is pretty much copy/paste star wars battlefront.

[Sasheria]

 

Actually as someone that was there from the start

 

Realm Abilities is where the game started going off the path and failing

 

When you had assassins having 3 full insta heals (so stupid, idea of a assasin was huge upfront damage and no real defence if the upfront damage doesnt kill outright. That went out window when assassins just popped one of 3 insta cast full heals to get away)

The endless stamina that made chains and styles meaningless as everyone always had endless stamina. Before that players had to learn their character and plan their moves because they had to get it right the first time. Not just spam endless styles over and over.

 

PRE RAs is where the RVR was the best. Just needed to slightly tinker with the CC duration and add resist chance vrs cc to be fully functional.

 

Everything else was perfect.

I quit before Realm Abilities. Sounds pretty bad.

 

What can we take from this?

 

I think Faction Vs Faction would be pretty cool for SWTOR. Maybe have players deposit ore mine/harvest during the raid and fortified a base. Players can defend the base and another group of players gather resources.

[Drakkip]

 

Actually as someone that was there from the start

 

Realm Abilities is where the game started going off the path and failing

 

When you had assassins having 3 full insta heals (so stupid, idea of a assasin was huge upfront damage and no real defence if the upfront damage doesnt kill outright. That went out window when assassins just popped one of 3 insta cast full heals to get away)

The endless stamina that made chains and styles meaningless as everyone always had endless stamina. Before that players had to learn their character and plan their moves because they had to get it right the first time. Not just spam endless styles over and over.

 

PRE RAs is where the RVR was the best. Just needed to slightly tinker with the CC duration and add resist chance vrs cc to be fully functional.

 

Everything else was perfect.

 

Yeah I can't argue with you about some of the RA's being dumb. I primarily played a druid, but I also had a bard and a nightstalker. What I remember about my druid was getting MCL that was something like a 40% mana recovery, a 60% mana recovery, 80% mana recovery. There we several RA's that were like that for my druid. So for me I was always getting something right off the start and eventually they just rounded out. I'll be honestly all I remember about pre RA's was the chain mez's at the gates.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Drakkip

[hairlessOrphan]

Yeah I can't argue with you about some of the RA's being dumb. I primarily played a druid, but I also had a bard and a nightstalker. What I remember about my druid was getting MCL that was something like a 40% mana recovery, a 60% mana recovery, 80% mana recovery. There we several RA's that were like that for my druid. So for me I was always getting something right off the start and eventually they just rounded out. I'll be honestly all I remember about pre RA's was the chain mez's at the gates.

 

Those were such good times. DAoCC.

[Kindara]

EQ1's world events were probably some of the best ever. There was nothing like wandering about to suddenly have an angry god show up and wipe droves of players of all levels until finally enough came forward to send him back where he came from. I also enjoyed its skill system not like the combat stuff but the fact you could learn other languages so you could talk in fairly good secret around other people and all they see is like orc or dragon gibberish.

 

It had some sandbox elements as far as faction, language and its skill point system but the rest was fairly theme park.

 

More games need to put GM run events back into their game. I mean it would be pretty awsome to fly down to Corellia or even Drommund Kaas and see it under major attack by the republic or even like a third party that just wants power for themselves.

 

I did love this past world even with the plague but a good GM style one to liven things up would be way more exciting. They can keep WoW style elements to themselves though we've got the fairly decent parts of WoW already in game we don't need more.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Kindara

[Deyjarl]

300,000 was considered to be top of the line as far as sub numbers. .

 

Not really no. You are ignoring sub numbers from other games that topped a million. DAoC was not the top of the market back then competing against games of that day.

 

Seems you have some selective memory. Not blaming you, often happens with people remembering their first or favorite MMO.

Edited April 27, 2012 by Deyjarl

[demonskies]

1. EQ2- RoK time period. Talent systems that actually are earned rather than given at each level with an AA system. Tiered Raiding that almost no one could clear and were very challenging. Mentor system, in depth crafting system that actually made acrafting fun and not just click a button. Housing system and amazing lore, heritage quests with awesome rewards.

 

2.EQ1- the vast world that I could always get lost in, working to get quests. months to reach max level on first toon whether it was grindy or not. death penalties. great community back in the day. nothing like walking into halas and getting mauled by all the bears, wolfs, and skeletons at such a low level and running back to the guards. Body runs.

 

3.Asherons Call- The community events and atmosphere of the game even though it was hard to compete with EQ1.

 

4. World of Warcraft- Bringing the casualness to mmos to build a bigger communtiy. Improving on features that EQ1, AC, DAOC and all others that came before it to bring more people to the genre. Things like Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, seemless contintents with no load times. there are many other things that they evolved the genre that can be learned from.

 

5. Any mmo with an amazing character creation- Champions, COH, COV, almost any asian based MMO. Any mmo should have an amazing character creation. If that game expects me to have 90, 100, 180 days played time I want my character to be amazing not some bland carbon copy of every other human body type with the 8 different hairstyles and 4 body types.

[Voqar]

You can't model after DAoC unless your PvP is fully integrated with your game such that RvR is actually happening. Almost no games do this kind of design even though it's the ONLY one that doesn't suck for PvP in MMORPGs.

 

BGs and/or arena are not quality PvP in the MMORPG sense, they are slapped on garbage mini games that have zero tie to the rest of the game.

 

Plus, even DAoC flushed RvR down the toilet once they added RPs and RAs. MMORPG should be compelling and purposeful, as it was in DAoC before they added points and epeen to it. Once they added RPs and RAs, it diminished the whole system and turned it more into a point farming and ganking situation. DAoC PvP was at its best before RAs/RPs, when people went out to fight for their realm and there were epic battles with 100's of people at once. I'm hoping GW2 recaptures this because IMO, nothing else ever has and MMORPG PvP has sucked for years now.

 

Beyond that, TOR has the same endgame as anyone. What they don't have is balance worth a crap and the content is more brutal than ever to grind.

 

The balance of risk/reward/difficulty between raids, hard mode instances, lvl 50 instances, and PvP vs the rewards is completely screwed up. In addition, PvP gear should never be competitive with PvE gear for PvE endgame content. It's PvP gear...duh. It's really stupid for soloists doing next to nothing to get high quality PvE gear via pseudo-PvP (BGS are not real PvP).

 

The heavily scripted instances with VO and deep stories are amazing the first time. They're ok the next few times. Once you're grinding them for gear/points/whatever over and over all that scripting and VO is nothing but utterly brutal.

 

Content in any MMORPG gets miserable once you have to grind it, but you feel it a LOT more in TOR due to how heavily storied and scripted the content is. Redoing the same dialogs over, and over, and over, is just pain.

 

Raids, like reg EV, so stupid easy it's just silly. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a loot pinata compared to the far more difficult HM 4-mans.

 

The other tedium factor is trash mobs. My crew quickly abandoned doing any bonus stuff in endgame instances. You double the length of the instance doing bonus crap, for 1 extra boss that drops the worst loot in the instance. Trash in general in TOR is so insanely volumuous and repetitive, especially in endgame instances. It might give a heroic feel at times, but when you need to grind instances, the endless repetitive trash is just horrid.

 

MMOs as a whole need to embrace the randomized content that's been in some games for years, it would make pve endgame so much better. LDON from EQLive, randomized zones/dungeons/content in Diablo - stuff like that - not 100% random but enough variance that there's usually a feeling of exploring and unknown.

 

Endgame instances should also be shorter. No LFG tool + long and tedious instances assures people will have problems finding groups, which is not fun. I join guilds, I have friends, I get groups but so many people need help with LFG and the game design should lend itself to making grouping more accessible.

[cpnjac]

Seems you have some selective memory. Not blaming you, often happens with people remembering their first or favorite MMO.

 

Not really, no. According to MMOData.net, during the 2001-2003 timeframe Lineage was posting the highest subscription numbers (around 3 million), but that was due to its wild popularity in Korea; it wasn't nearly so popular in the west. RuneScape had roughly 1 million "subscribers", but it was a free web-based MMO at the time, so the comparison doesn't quite balance out. Everquest had about 425 thousand subscribers, Final Fantasy XI about 300 thousand, Ultima Online and DAoC both about 250 thousand.

 

So yes: at the time, DAoC was showing perfectly respectable numbers. The only million-plus games on the radar were a free web game and something the Koreans were into. Not really a "selective memory" situation. Sorry you didn't enjoy DAoC as much as others did.

[Stellin]

 

Not really no. You are ignoring sub numbers from other games that topped a million. DAoC was not the top of the market back then competing against games of that day.

 

Seems you have some selective memory. Not blaming you, often happens with people remembering their first or favorite MMO.

 

First of all...I do not count free games like Ragnarok. Secondly, I am speaking of Western audiences. Lineage was the only MMO in 2001 to have over a million but 99% of their customers were from Taiwan, and Korea. I highly doubt you played that game, or are referencing that game.

 

Sooo...Please name one Western MMO that had over a million subscribers back in 2001!!

 

Everquest was #1. EQ had higher numbers than DAOC but never broke a million during 2001-2002. Upon release, DAOC quickly outnumbered UO and Asherons Call in subscription numbers. Anarchy Online was which posted numbers below 150,000 took third place right after DAOC. This trend continued until 2003 when Lineage 2 was released which had a Western audience. Everquest was number one for 5 years., followed by DAOC being in the top three for the same time period.

 

So please go do some research before you start spouting out selective memory stuff.

[Bulwyf]

Is that why they never broke 300,000 with that game?

 

Sometimes I wonder if all those fondly remembering DAoC only do so fondly because it was their first MMO?

 

Daoc was the second largest MMO in the market in NA during its prime. I find it funny how many were not around or intentionally forget that pre WoW a MMO would be fine with 100k or less subs a month.

 

I have not played any MMO before or after Daoc that had such a gratifying end game model. Three factions fighting in a huge open world frontier with meaningful consequences of their actions. It took a community to survive let alone win in that game. I would kill for this game to have a similar end game.

[Bulwyf]

Not really, no. According to MMOData.net, during the 2001-2003 timeframe Lineage was posting the highest subscription numbers (around 3 million), but that was due to its wild popularity in Korea; it wasn't nearly so popular in the west. RuneScape had roughly 1 million "subscribers", but it was a free web-based MMO at the time, so the comparison doesn't quite balance out. Everquest had about 425 thousand subscribers, Final Fantasy XI about 300 thousand, Ultima Online and DAoC both about 250 thousand.

 

So yes: at the time, DAoC was showing perfectly respectable numbers. The only million-plus games on the radar were a free web game and something the Koreans were into. Not really a "selective memory" situation. Sorry you didn't enjoy DAoC as much as others did.

 

Don't sweat it. The guy literally has no clue what he is talking about. I've played MMOs since UO pre Trammel split and I remember what people were playing back in Daoc's prime. In NA it was EQ and Daoc. You also had games like UO and AC but Daoc and EQ were the big two.

[Qoojo]

Is that why they never broke 300,000 with that game?

 

Sometimes I wonder if all those fondly remembering DAoC only do so fondly because it was their first MMO?

 

Buffbots ftw! Serious beer goggles for the DAoC fans. I get the same chuckle when I hear people talking about how great SWG was pre-NGE.

[Qoojo]

Don't sweat it. The guy literally has no clue what he is talking about. I've played MMOs since UO pre Trammel split and I remember what people were playing back in Daoc's prime. In NA it was EQ and Daoc. You also had games like UO and AC but Daoc and EQ were the big two.

 

There really was only UO, EQ1, DAoC, and AC to pick from in NA. Played them all. A big part of EQ1's success is due to not having any real competition. DAoC came along and lessened the stupid downtime, then eventually WoW showed up and put an end to ridiculous down time. I have actually read a book while playing EQ1 when having to solo.

[hairlessOrphan]

Buffbots ftw! Serious beer goggles for the DAoC fans. I get the same chuckle when I hear people talking about how great SWG was pre-NGE.

 

Buffbots were lame.

 

Gatecamping was awesome.

 

Leveling was terrible.

 

Killspam made it all worthwhile.

[Roechacca]

Star Wars Galaxies, hands down.

 

they got end game content right. It was the Legacy quests that were terrible for leveling.

Static PvP bases

Personal Houses & Vendors

Player Cities

Player ships as houses

Crafters as separate class

Entertainers ( a music ability would be nice)

 

At the end invasions.... and atmospheric flight

[TaramCaldar]

Is that why they never broke 300,000 with that game?

 

Sometimes I wonder if all those fondly remembering DAoC only do so fondly because it was their first MMO?

 

Seriously... you need to remember the times... 300,000 back then was HUGE. Only EverQuest 1 and Lineage II were bigger at the time. From 1997 through 2004 or 2005 (when did WOW release?) 500,000 was the highest number any subscription based MMO ever got. WOW broke that, finally, when it released. Even Star Wars Galaxies didn't break the 400,000 subscriber mark and it was based on the most popular IP for sci-fi out there.

[TaramCaldar]

 

Not really no. You are ignoring sub numbers from other games that topped a million. DAoC was not the top of the market back then competing against games of that day.

 

Seems you have some selective memory. Not blaming you, often happens with people remembering their first or favorite MMO.

 

Actually it's you who have the selective memory. The only games that had 'toped a million' were 1 or 2 games in the far east which didn't use the same (or even similar) subscription system at all and really couldn't be compared properly since it was like comparing apples to pork chops... The only games, at the time, that had more players than DAOC were EQ1 (and it eventually dropped below DAOC) and Lineage II. Lineage II had about 700,000 subs at DAOC's peak of 350,000. At peak DAOC had more subs than any game except Lineage II because both EQ1 and UO had dipped below it and none of the modern MMO's ahd released yet.

 

For it's time DAOC was a huge success and had huge numbers.

[Aethyriel]

let's see...

 

I'd like constant worldevents like Rift had them. Every other month or so you had the chance to get new fun items or even gear upgrades, pets etc from world events. WoW had a similiar thing but not constantly changing themes like Rift. It was amazing and gave you something to do with your lv 50 char. Further, tied to those world events are the Rift events the game had where there were public groups and a zonequest (in swtor it would be a worldquest).

 

I'd also love a reputation system with some factions rewarding titles, gear (can also be only purely cosmetic, works fine with the mod system the game has), pets and stuff like that and on top of that an achievement system that's a little bit better than the codex thing, you don't know what you're missing, you have no real goal to achieve.

 

Tied into the acm system I'd like something similiar to the artifact collection you had in Rift, just roaming the world looking for stuff while chatting/listening to music or whatever.

 

For world design I'd also like a change, like removing those annoying spaceports, make traveling to other plants less boring/time consuming, nobody likes to get on a ship and get a loading screen, then get on a planet and get a loading screen to then take a taxi somewhere. It takes forever to just arrive on the belsavis/Ilum/black hole questhubs - especially black hole.

 

A LFG tool would also be appreciated, it's not fun standing around on the fleet without the option to do anything but drive around in order to find a grp for a FP, only FPs I ran were with a full guildgrp, never bothered with trying to find a grp otherwise and on my server there are over 200 people online in the evening. Tied to this I'd like a companion need roll function so running Fps with your full rakata toon is not just a huge waste of time, at least yu'd have gear progress for your companions.

 

For raids - well, I'd like to see NM mode removed and more raids added. It is not fun killing one and the same boss who gains one shiny new ability or so on three different difficulty settings. It simply is not fun, it's repetetive and boring, only real fun thing is the people talking dumb **** the entire time in TS3 after you've killed the awesome 4 -.- bosses in the new Operation.

 

Other stuff like Ship customization or a nice place in Kaas City that you can decorate would also be cool, something to call home, always missed that in other mmos. And, because it is a story driven game, I'd like to see more.. story, especially with companions. For future content I'd like them to say more during conversations and not only react to 3 choices and pop up with + x or - x on the bottom of the screen. They seem too much like hunterpets from woW most of the time, they should be more interative. On a sidenote - an option to reset and thus redo your entire class story would also be nice and besides that -> post creation character customization - a barber, the ability to gain or lose weight, change eyecolor etc, it's the future goddammit!

 

For spacecombat better designed missions with better control instead of this railroad system and all in all more activities like this that actually have nothing to do with the actual gameplay, like... cardgames, a casino where you can gamble and such things - I remember how I probably spend more time in games like FF7 or FF8 with the minigames than the actual game (gosh I loved that cardgame from FF8 ).

[ThiborF]

Is that why they never broke 300,000 with that game?

 

Sometimes I wonder if all those fondly remembering DAoC only do so fondly because it was their first MMO?

 

It cracked 300k back in a day when sustaining 250k meant you were doing things very well and anything close to 1m or more was unheard of except for Lineage. DAoC predates WoW (yes people, this genre existed prior to that 6000 lb. gorilla in the corner) and until very recently, Lineage 1, Lineage 2, WoW, Aion and Runescape were the only MMOs to boast more than 1m subs.

 

Your comment would be like looking back at the businessmen during the mid to late 1800s in the US and asking "Is that why they're no billion dollar companies?" Plenty of successful businesses during the time but, having one worth of $1B+ didn't happen until the formation of US Steel in 1901.

[demonskies]

 

Actually it's you who have the selective memory. The only games that had 'toped a million' were 1 or 2 games in the far east which didn't use the same (or even similar) subscription system at all and really couldn't be compared properly since it was like comparing apples to pork chops... The only games, at the time, that had more players than DAOC were EQ1 (and it eventually dropped below DAOC) and Lineage II. Lineage II had about 700,000 subs at DAOC's peak of 350,000. At peak DAOC had more subs than any game except Lineage II because both EQ1 and UO had dipped below it and none of the modern MMO's ahd released yet.

 

For it's time DAOC was a huge success and had huge numbers.

 

how come eastern games cant be compared who cares what there subscription model is. A mmo is a mmo. Wow likes to claim they have what close to 10 million subscribers NA and europe only make up about half and asia is the other half should we only say wow has only 5 million cuz asian subscription models dont count for some odd reason.

[SoloHand]

Just for conversations sake, what 5 MMO's should BW model additional SWTOR endgame material after? Not talking about an expansion,. Pretend you had to remain at lvl 50 forever. Which game formula would you choose?

Here are my top 5:

1) Dark Age of Camelot- Simply put....RvR and the best dam PvP of any game ever made. Endless fun at 50, plus it took FOREVER to reach lvl 50 in that game. Also...some of the best player housing ever implemented in a game.

2) World of Warcraft- Don't hate on this one. WoW did a lot of things right to give players lots of endgame material. I'm not talking WoW in it's current form, but pre-Cataclysm.

3) Star Wars Galaxies- Jump To Lightspeed. Crafting, Player Housing. That honestly was enough for most.

4) EverQuest 1- This game had it all as far as endgame grouping was concerned. You couldn't do endgame without a group. Hell...you couldn't do most of the game without a group. It had a sense of fear, and a sense of adventure, rarely seen is most modern MMO's

5) City of Heroes- Character creation. Simple. I would buy/play that game strictly for the character creation part of it. Hours and hours of endless fun. best character creation system ever created in any game (with SPORE, a close 2nd).

 

Never played WOW couldn't stand the art style, but DAOC is absolutely the one pvp system I wish another game would copy I had a blast in the frontiers for years....crafting and the housing were great as well.

 

Agreed on SWG but for some reason I ended up back at DAOC after a few months.

 

EQ was awesome for it's time, the leveling process was torture but I felt so much more immersed in that world than most other MMO's and I do believe it had something to do with the "danger" of the world when making your way around.

 

COH was great fun, my brother still plays it sometimes but after I hit 50 and made I ton of cool looking characters it became dull...best character creation though I would give to Champions Online ....basically the same thing as COH but updated

[Sorwen]

Just for conversations sake, what 5 MMO's should BW model additional SWTOR endgame material after? Not talking about an expansion,. Pretend you had to remain at lvl 50 forever. Which game formula would you choose?

Here are my top 5:

1) Dark Age of Camelot- Simply put....RvR and the best dam PvP of any game ever made. Endless fun at 50, plus it took FOREVER to reach lvl 50 in that game. Also...some of the best player housing ever implemented in a game.

2) World of Warcraft- Don't hate on this one. WoW did a lot of things right to give players lots of endgame material. I'm not talking WoW in it's current form, but pre-Cataclysm.

3) Star Wars Galaxies- Jump To Lightspeed. Crafting, Player Housing. That honestly was enough for most.

4) EverQuest 1- This game had it all as far as endgame grouping was concerned. You couldn't do endgame without a group. Hell...you couldn't do most of the game without a group. It had a sense of fear, and a sense of adventure, rarely seen is most modern MMO's

5) City of Heroes- Character creation. Simple. I would buy/play that game strictly for the character creation part of it. Hours and hours of endless fun. best character creation system ever created in any game (with SPORE, a close 2nd).

If the ripped any more off WoW it would be WoW. If they got any closer then game would loose any interest for me.

Edited April 27, 2012 by Sorwen

[FooBard]

How about something original? Must we always copy/paste or are all the good ideas already gone...

 

^ This.

 

If I wanted to play DAoC, I'd still be playing DAoC.

[PaxCorpii]

Let's stop modeling games after themepark MMOs and start looking at the future of MMOs. Do you know why I never login to WoW anymore? Because there is no point to their endgame.

 

Do you know why I login to EVE? Because there is no endgame and no levelcap. But I guess not everyone can appreciate a sandbox.