What went wrong with SWTOR and how to solve it

[MasterRilo]

This is a long post where I’ll describe what the core issues with SWTOR are in my opinion and make some radical suggestions that could make this game truly achieve it’s potential.

I'll start by clarifying where I'm coming from as a gamer. I've played WOW (and continue to) for years. But I started out with final fantasy, breath of fire and the such, leading up to all of Bioware's single player RPG's: Dragon Age, Mass Effect, KOTOR. I'm a huge fan of RPG’s. I'm also a big fan of the Star Wars universe. So it goes without saying that I was very excited SWTOR. My experience with WOW was that while I enjoyed the end game raiding, the narrative was irrelevant. WOW is not an "RPG" experience for me, but rather a multi-player strategy game, where it's all about strategic development of my character and end game. I was excited about the prospect of an MMO with the sort of great writing and individual story immersion I've seen in Bioware games. But while those elements are there in SWTOR, I think Bioware failed to go outside the box in developing an MMO framework that suits it. I also think that could change.

 

The best thing about SWTOR is that it has 8 fantastic single player stories underneath everything. The acting is fantastic, the characters appealing, the narrative drives the game. The worse thing about SWTOR is pretty much everything else. It's a great single player game, but a boring MMO is my honest opinion, mostly because the way the RPG and MMO aspects are grouped together just doesn’t mesh well. It's odd watching clones of companions everywhere who are, within your own story, portrayed as unique individuals you care about. It's odd seeing 20 people in the capital ship with the title "champion of the great hunt" when you just had this epic moment of being crowned "the one". It's odd to go through an evolving individual narrative while this shared background MMO world remains utterly static. It was very odd, to give one example that applies to many situations, when I had a quest to kill a mob as a BH because there was a bounty on it, to get to that mob and see another BH killing it, wait for it to re-spawn and THEN kill it myself, because I was immersed in my personal narrative as a BH. In a game driven by immersion, the stakes for upholding that immersion are much higher than in a game that doesn’t even try (like WOW).

 

The MMO aspect of this game felt like it didn't add anything to my leveling experience in fact and in fact detracted from it. This includes the excessive amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B, and the fetching quests in between the story driven quests, all of which just felt like it disrupted my story’s progression. That may come out as odd from a WOW player but as I said, an immersive narrative doesn’t drive WOW, but it does drive SWTOR.

 

When you get to the end game in SWTOR, the real problems start. Getting groups together has just been too much of a pain. You made a big mistake in listening to the rhetoric common in forums of how cross realm instance queues "destroy the community" and failed to understand most casual players view it as a requirement. You know what else destroys the community? Empty realms. Casual players, though not the loudest on forums, drive subscriptions and make up a much larger part of the player base. I'm a very experienced and skilled player but consider myself casual for two simple reasons: I have a full time job with unpredictable hours and I have a wife. Generally speaking, it's just very hard for me to have scheduled game time on a regular basis, and that’s a situation a lot of players are in. When I have some time to play a game I'm certainly not willing to spend half an hour of it spamming chat and trying to put together a pug. I need it to be convenient and quick.

 

Add to that the many bugs in instances that seem to take too long to be fixed and very little flexibility or customization options for your game play (beyond picking your class and specialization) and you got a real end game problem. I feel that the combat system didn’t bring much new to the table, outside of the visual theme. Beyond the story there is very little innovation here, combat plays like WOW but less responsive, talents work like WOW except from 3 years ago, exploration plays like WOW except without flying mounts. The bottom line is, you took a WOW MMO framework and then applied a mass effect narrative style to it and, well, it just doesn’t work. You needed to have come up with a different MMO framework to suit your narrative style, done something very different with the genre. I think you played it too safe.

 

So here are my humble suggestions on how to still accomplish this. Bellow, I basically outline a different conceptual framework I think would better suit SWTOR's strengths.

 

Movement: Keep the large planets large but make getting around a lot faster. It’s important to keep tempo in a narrative, taking too long to get from one place to another is a drag, no one likes it. It should be a non-issue. Give characters the "riding" skill from level 1 and make the vehicles it about 3 times faster than they are now. Make them require some effort to “guide”, make them fun if possible. Just get rid of the CD on the recall ability, why does it even have a CD anyway? If you’ve already explored the area and connected the two spots, why exactly are you making me walk it again if my recall is on CD? No point to it.

 

Planets: Make each planet an instance. Sounds funny but bear with me. You and your group (if you’re in one) get their own version of that planet enabling completing quests now actually makes the planet and NPC’s respond and change. That guy you already rescued in a quest is no longer on the floor bleeding, that enemy cannon you blew up actually stays blown up, the guy who said he would leave town after you complete a quest, actually leaves. The elite mob you killed stays dead. These instances, which I would call “questing instances”, would never reset automatically but could be reset manually. You could invite a friend to zone in with you and quest together (cross realm), you could also queue cross realm to be paired up with other players, however, only one of each class would be allowed in the instance to maintain immersion and uniqueness, and the instance would incorporate them in the narrative. Let’s say you zoned in with a friend who is a BH and you’re an inquisitor. Now the NPC that welcomes you both to the planet say, “Darth Johnny has asked that this Bounty Hunter work with you on this task sith. General Diddy wishes to you speak to you right away.” You get the idea.

 

These instances would be set up, difficulty wise for 4 players. What happens if people leave? In this new framework you could have up to 3 companions out at a time, and have some tools to customize their behavior (think dragon age). Companions would also be closer to a player in power. So if one person leaves, someone brings out a companion to finish, since it’s one class per player, companions would all look unique as well. If everyone leaves or you want to solo, bring out 3 companions. If you want to start over with a new friend, reset it, and you can redo all quests together. The way it works now if your friend comes into an area and you’ve done most of the quests, you’d help him but not get any rewards since you can’t do the quest twice. This “reset” system would make it worthwhile to redo quests with a friend since you could actually redo the quests. If you just really liked your main class quest line in a planet, you can reset it and do it over even by yourself (note that your story line advances after you complete it the first time, so doing it over would just be for fun/rewards) This new companion system would make all content challenging if you want to level with friends, while still enabling you to solo it with your companion team. Right now if you’re leveling with two friends nothing will be challenging. This system would give players an incentive to stay together and finish a planet together, developing friendships. Group quests now encourage you to group up for 5 min with someone (assuming you can find someone, which is unlikely) do the group quest and that’s it. Most importantly, this approach would be far more immersive and put the MMO in narrative by truly incorporating other players in your narrative.

 

Instances and raids: Create a wide, cross realm instance and raid queuing tool and don't allow companions to be used in them. Companions would be a questing instance tool and live in your ship, they couldn’t be used in instances, raids or follow you around in the shared area at the capital ship.

 

Customization: Customizing the look of your gear, including moving augments and such between pieces should not cost anything. You need to rethink your talent three system, of all the things you shouldn’t have emulated WOW in; the talent tree is not one of them. Their new approach, make talents everyone has to choose baseline and make the talent tree about real choices and customizations, is really the direction to move. I’m all for you doing it your own unique way, I’d prefer it actually, but that basic concept of real choice needs to be there.

 

PVP: Just make the queue cross realm. Lower queue times are my reply to all arguments I’ve seen people make against it. I actually think SWTOR has some of the best pvp dynamics I’ve seen in MMO’s.

Edited May 11, 2012 by MasterRilo

[DarthWoad]

TL:DR but they wont read it unless you can prove youre a game designer

[Gungan]

Haven't quite finished reading your essay yet, but here's my 2 cents.

 

The flashpoints are boring and unrewarding. The boss encounters are as mindless as the trash before them. The characters are generic archetypes with high school problems. There are no interesting villains for you to struggle against - I challenge you to list by name the bosses in, oh lets say "Battle of Ilum" without looking them up.

 

Nobody wants to group because the group content is lame and unfinished, and 80% of servers are too light to support a grouping community.

 

The combat is tedious much of the time. The animations are slow, unnecessarily long, and skills are delayed or unresponsive a lot of the time. How many times do I have to press Hi-Impact Bolt before it actually fires?

 

The PVP is a giant snare/root fest as soon as you step into a warzone. Additionally, there no meaning to it. It's a sideshow attraction with no impact on the game world. Open world PVP doesn't exist because both factions get their own levelling areas.

 

Every single event of consequence (and I use the term loosely) is hidden behind a green instance portal, which then turns red when completed forever barring revisitation to another part of the world, even for your own class. The entire open world is static. No dynamic events of any kind, including day/night cycles or random encounters. Every mob is in the spot 24 hours a day. There's also no reason to revisit planets you've already done.

 

Levelling is entirely linear, with a single area for each level range with all side quests being the same for every character on that faction, which consititues about 75%+ of things you have to do to level.

 

Launched without any of the social tools an MMO requires, and capped server populations way too low because their awful, awful engine cannot support large scale gatherings. They should have stuck with Unreal.

 

The VO is totally unnecessary on side quests. Listening to people talk while giving you a task like every other game is not a "cinematic experience".

 

In summary, the story lines are pretty good, and are the only thing in this game that even remotely resembles a BioWare product. Everything else screams of Mythic, who compose the bulk of the BioWare Austin team.

[MasterRilo]

TL:DR but they wont read it unless you can prove youre a game designer

 

: P I don't work in the gaming industry but I am a programmer, and also have an MBA. Hopefully that will be good enough! lol

Edited May 11, 2012 by MasterRilo

[Andryah]

So here are my humble suggestions on how to still accomplish this. Bellow, I basically create a very different MMO framework, of the sort I would love to play and that I think suits a story driven game such as this.

 

Two comments:

 

1) Walk the talk. Shows you actually know what to do. Design and release your own MMO. Though I guess you could stick with your armchair criticism of other peoples work.

 

2) honestly, I could not find the "humble" in your very long post.

[MasterRilo]

Two comments:

 

1) Walk the talk. Shows you actually know what to do. Design and release your own MMO. Though I guess you could stick with your armchair criticism of other peoples work.

 

2) honestly, I could not find the "humble" in your very long post.

 

1) So, I can't criticize the game I pay for and want to succeed unless I and abandon my current career, start my own gaming company and design my own MMO? That's priceless.

 

2) So the definition of humble is, hmm, short? I said humble because I recognize despite being an IT person I'm not a game developer and know my ideas may sound better in my head than they actually are. But I thought I'd share anyways since that's what forums are for It's long because there are a lot of thoughts in it, you don't have to read it if you don't want to you know.

Edited May 11, 2012 by MasterRilo

[Majestic_Jazz]

Nothing went wrong with SWTOR.

 

I am having a good time with it.

[Andryah]

1) So, I can't criticize the game I pay for and want to succeed unless I and abandon my current career, start my own gaming company and design my own MMO? That's priceless.

 

No, you can criticize a game you pay to play, as long as it is constructive. But that's not what you did. Instead you presented a proposal for radical change to the games structure. All I said was walk the talk pal.

 

Or were you just using your thread as a clever way to try to gank the game developers, while pretending to be constructive?

Edited May 11, 2012 by Andryah

[Andryah]

Nothing went wrong with SWTOR.

 

I am having a good time with it.

 

/signed

[Synxos]

None of those changes fixes what's actually wrong with this game.

They are just sideways, and many backwards changes. Making each planet an instance? a huge backwards step.

 

There are much more fundamental problems with this game. I pointed these out in my thread, and they closed it.

[Gharlane]

Good read and some good ideas as well. I totally agree about all the immersion breaking things, my pet peve is places like "The Works" on Coruscant where you have guards fighting rogue droids...forever, always the same nothing ever changes...heck they keep shooting even when the droids have been killed by a player. I assume the "battle" is supposed to add to immersion but for me it totally breaks it. Its theme park with a vengance exactly like what you would see on a Disneyland ride.

[MasterRilo]

No, you can criticize a game you pay to play, as long as it is constructive. But that's not what you did. Instead you presented a proposal for radical change to the games structure. All I said was walk the talk pal.

 

Or were you just using your thread as a clever way to try to gank the game developers, while pretending to be constructive?

 

I think I was being constructive and simply sharing ideas, but you're entitled to your opinion Sadly I do not plan on developing my own MMO so I'm sorry I don't meet your standards for making this forum post.

[Cupelixx]

Two comments:

 

1) Walk the talk. Shows you actually know what to do. Design and release your own MMO. Though I guess you could stick with your armchair criticism of other peoples work.

 

2) honestly, I could not find the "humble" in your very long post.

 

So your point is "if you don't like it, make a better one". What is accomplished with such a silly comment?

 

Imagine filing a complaint at a restaurant you visit and glthe conversation goes like this: "Excuse me chef, I'm sorry but my steak is completely overcooked. Actually, half of it is burnt. Could you please fix it?" "Oh you don't like it? Well perhaps you could cook a better steak".

 

Don't be so insulting. The person you replied to was trying to make constructive feedback and offer solutions. This is a discussion forum so if you don't like what someone else has posted, explain why you disagree. Don't post rude, cop-out responses.

[Pheroras]

In summary, the story lines are pretty good, and are the only thing in this game that even remotely resembles a BioWare product. Everything else screams of Mythic, who compose the bulk of the BioWare Austin team.

 

The one thing Mythic know about doing is consolidating servers for shrinking game populations.

[MasterRilo]

Haven't quite finished reading your essay yet, but here's my 2 cents.

 

The flashpoints are boring and unrewarding. The boss encounters are as mindless as the trash before them. The characters are generic archetypes with high school problems. There are no interesting villains for you to struggle against - I challenge you to list by name the bosses in, oh lets say "Battle of Ilum" without looking them up.

 

Nobody wants to group because the group content is lame and unfinished, and 80% of servers are too light to support a grouping community.

 

The combat is tedious much of the time. The animations are slow, unnecessarily long, and skills are delayed or unresponsive a lot of the time. How many times do I have to press Hi-Impact Bolt before it actually fires?

 

The PVP is a giant snare/root fest as soon as you step into a warzone. Additionally, there no meaning to it. It's a sideshow attraction with no impact on the game world. Open world PVP doesn't exist because both factions get their own levelling areas.

 

Every single event of consequence (and I use the term loosely) is hidden behind a green instance portal, which then turns red when completed forever barring revisitation to another part of the world, even for your own class. The entire open world is static. No dynamic events of any kind, including day/night cycles or random encounters. Every mob is in the spot 24 hours a day. There's also no reason to revisit planets you've already done.

 

Levelling is entirely linear, with a single area for each level range with all side quests being the same for every character on that faction, which consititues about 75%+ of things you have to do to level.

 

Launched without any of the social tools an MMO requires, and capped server populations way too low because their awful, awful engine cannot support large scale gatherings. They should have stuck with Unreal.

 

The VO is totally unnecessary on side quests. Listening to people talk while giving you a task like every other game is not a "cinematic experience".

 

In summary, the story lines are pretty good, and are the only thing in this game that even remotely resembles a BioWare product. Everything else screams of Mythic, who compose the bulk of the BioWare Austin team.

 

I do agree with you that considering the quality of the narrative while you level, the flash points seem to fall short of bringing that same level of depth. And I also agree about responsiveness.

 

I agree that pvp is sort of a sideshow attraction, but to me it's an enjoyable sideshow attraction, if that makes sense

I think it's possible to implement great world pvp, but honestly I'm yet to see it in this MMO or any other.

 

Like I said on my post I definitely agree that launching without solid queue and LFG tools was a mistake. But that's gone and done, I just hope they implement it soon.

 

Definitely my main issue is the lack of dynamic response from the world environment, if my solution is too radical I do hope they come up with something to improve that.

[Kalfear]

1) So, I can't criticize the game I pay for and want to succeed unless I and abandon my current career, start my own gaming company and design my own MMO? That's priceless.

 

2) So the definition of humble is, hmm, short? I said humble because I recognize despite being an IT person I'm not a game developer and know my ideas may sound better in my head than they actually are. But I thought I'd share anyways since that's what forums are for It's long because there are a lot of thoughts in it, you don't have to read it if you don't want to you know.

 

just ignore her Riio

 

That whole "build your own MMORPG" junk is beyond intentional trolling and posters shouldnt have to put up with it

 

These are forums for our imput and you have every right to makeyour suggestions!

Everyone does!

[kirorx]

My BIG 4

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1) Planets

 

The planets are linear and designed for leveling, not really for day to day living.

 

Create like 5 new planets, open world planets that can be more lived in by players, maybe factional bases or something.

(i liked swg's housing, but it does litter the environment, so we can pass on that).

 

Less restrictive and easier access to areas by both factions.

 

Multiple cities and starports. I really enjoyed the GCW update from SWG so something similar would be awesome and this could add endless content for both PvE Players and PvP players to control these planets for their faction.

 

Some planets could be...Yavin, Dantoooine, Mustafar (hey it was around at this time), Dathomir, Kashyyk and/or Manaan. (though manaan would be hard for the open world build).

 

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2) RP elements

 

Chat Bubbles, Day/night cycles, weather

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3) Species Options

 

Add unlockable non human species to legacy for completedclasses. This wont affect storylines, because you already completed the storyline and we want to play weirdo aliens, after all its starwars.

 

The VO for non basic speaking creatures is already in game, as are most of the desired templates

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4) GEAR

Orange Gear: Make all looted gear able to be RE'd into orange moddable gear.

 

Set Bonuses need to be attached to the Mods and not the armor.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

SOME FLUFF: Sever Forums on this site. A tight community is much desired IMO.

Edited May 11, 2012 by kirorx

[Darth_Eminok]

Instanced Planets? Easier to move around?

 

You're trying to infect SWTOR with the WOWplague aren't ya:rak_02:.

 

 

Tsk tsk. This is not the game for me... too much for casual players.

 

While BW does "appreciate" feedback, they'll never do this.

[thewatcheruatu]

Nothing went wrong with SWTOR.

 

I am having a good time with it.

 

Yeah, this echoes my thoughts when I read the post title and then skimmed the first few paragraphs. The original post makes a lot of assumptions about the sort of game SWTOR should have been. I think it's exactly the game it should have been. The "core problems" described just aren't core problems in my experience, if they're problems at all.

[Kalfear]

My BIG 4

.

 

heh ill meet your four with my big four!

 

1) Socialization/interaction/community (seriously, while this is not a cure all, this is mandatory for any healing to begin)

 

Paazaak in Cantinas only

Swoop Racing (K1 not K2) from Cantinas only

HoloChess in cantinas only

Pit Fitting (K1 or K2 style) in cantinas only

Veiwable veiw screens to watch Hutta Ball matchs in Cantinas only

 

Reason its cantina only is this gives Cantinas a meaningful purpose to exist while bringing players togather in specific locations with out using the forced grouping card to promote socialization. Other reason is cantinas can work as a gambleing house where you can place bets on everything taking place there.

 

2) Introduction of DAoC (Pre RA) RVR on Illum or if need be on new planets not yet accesable where we defend our relics/technology and try to steal the other guys for a small bonus to our faction (rather then individual bonuses that help only the individual)

 

Could also unlock access to special heroic areas (ALA Darkness Falls dungeon in DAoC) where special drops and mobs are found.

 

3) Public grouping events (ala RIFT) where waves of imperials and sith try to take over a area and the republic forces (or vise versa) need to battle them back

 

4) Housing.

 

Ships are cool and yeah maybe they get modable in the far distant future but its not enough. The ships are already cluttered items wise and other then hiring some NPCs to make ship look more active, there really not enough space to decorate it yourself.

 

I want a house on a planet (prefer EQ2 houseing as DAoC wasnt perfect and UO/SWG is completely out of question) so I can decorate it and make it my own. Be it a 1,2,3,5 room house or appartment.

 

Those that dont want one dont need to get one but for this player, I miss having my own pad.

 

Extention of ideas above: Id really like to see special quest lines put in for things like Swoop bike parts, paazaak cards, house trophies and decorations, ect. So much extra content could be added off these concepts!