Do Worlds Feel Lifeless?

[wolfmith]

yeah.... some funny features to be added in a latter development stage of the game...

[DarthJimilingus]

You guys are making me want to go back to LOTRO! lol Yeah those things would be nice and the low population doesn't help. I feel like I'm playing a single player game a lot of times. Too bad I deleted all of my LOTRO characters. I put all of my chips on this game.

Although when you do finally find someone to group with they are a hardcore gamer so they know what they are doing. I grouped with 3 random people yesterday for about 2 hours and we did dailies on Ilum and the Black Hole. I actually had some fun!

[BJWyler]

So I come from SWG, and I dabbled in a little of LotRO and DC Universe. SWTOR by far has the nicest looking worlds, but there's one problem. They feel dead compared to other MMOs. Nothing ever changes. Hardly any NPCs ever move. Some may gesture, but they all stay in the same place. There's no day/night or weather cycle, so the whole world seems static.

 

I love the game for what it is, but it's hard to truly immerse myself in the world because it doesn't really feel like one. Everything feels static and lifeless to me. Am I alone?

 

I don't think you are too far off there - the world's are definitely designed to be static. Whether you think that is gamebreaking or not depends on they type of games you prefer. For me, 95% of the games I have played are designed that way - living, breathing worlds are something that the technology has only permitted within the last couple of years (in any significant way), so I am used to it. As someone else mentioned, the world's would feel more alive on the light servers if there were more players to see and interact with.

 

For me, dynamic worlds are only interesting if it significantly enhances or effects gameplay. I really don't care about day/night cycles or weather unless it affects exploration or combat in some significant way, otherwise it's a waste of development resources. Same goes for Free-Roaming NPCs - nice for the environment, but I don't need it, and I certainly don't want it for key NPCs - I like exploration, but don't want to be forced to waste play time trying to track down NPCs I need for quests and objectives; they should be static.

 

BJ

[EzoEo]

In every MMO the worlds are static and don't change and look the same day to day.

 

In LOTRO nothing changes, NPC's don't move, plants don't grow and all that happens in the sun comes up. Added to the obvious that usuall every Elf quest giver uses the same model and stands there like a statue. It's world is neither better or worse than SW:TORs.

 

The rose tinted SWG. Each and every planet was just as a lifeless area as SW:TOR. Planets did not change and were often littered with uncontrolled sprawls of player housing. It never felt alive or like a real plant in any sense and only the player interaction made things better.

 

Adding more players to a planet will not make the world feel more "alive" just make it more busy.

 

So really all the MMO's are lifeless worlds because NPC's do nothing and the worlds don't change.

Edited June 3, 2012 by EzoEo

[Florial]

I know for me on lotr I always find it cool when im in the forest somewhere on my hunter and its dark and starts raining. I have several times looked for a downed tree or overhanging rock . And started a campfire and cooked.

 

Even had my group join me doing it and sat there shooting the breeze for awhile. I know it might seem lame but its things like that ,Thats kept me playing it since launch till today. It may not be the most up to date game on the market ,But the devs sure knew what they was doing to create a immersive world, I will alsways believe its the most under apreciated marvel of the mmo circles todate.

 

Humm, you are making me tempted to go back and fire up my account again. I really enjoyed LoTR while I played it. I burned out with Mines of Moria, some dramas in my guild and all that good stuff. I do agree that the game was lovely to play. I still miss my little cottage. I'm a lifer so I assume that all my goodies will still be there waiting for me. LoTR was so great in that aspect and truly was immersive.

 

As to the worlds in SWTOR, yes they have always felt a tad bit lifeless to me. The enviroments are well done but could be better imo.

[insomniMACK]

Cho Mai feels lifeless because NOBODY IS ONLINE.

 

It's really starting to get to me

[ProphetX]

Yes they do and its proabably my number one complaint with the game .

 

#1 Audio

 

You have a huge massive soundtrack but yet you only hear music when you enter your ship , enter specific areas of a planet . Star Wars set the bar for invoking feelings through music , u never heard Luke , or Leia , or ObiWan's sound of just there feet walking in the movies . It was always accompanied by music , the music for a planet gave it a vibe a feeling . This game is void of that for boasting such a huge soundtrack . 75% of my time in game is spent listening to my speeder hum , or the sound of my feet walking through a world . The most immersion breaking feature is the lifelessness of the planets . You walk into a city and its like playing the manequin adventures , you see people moving there arms carrying on conversations but you don't hear these conversations . Its like a whole game of mimes . Granted you do catch the occasional tidbits , my favorite being the one on Tattooine where the guy says he saw a jawa without his robe on . But more often than not you see people talking but you dont hear them talking . The bars feel lifeless there is no sound of patrons having conversations or drinks . The cities don't feel like cities , I can't even imagine any major city in the US walking through it and only hearing the sound of my feet . This game just never made me feel like I was living in Star Wars , I give the Audio an F .

 

2) Game design

 

The worlds are so linear they discourage all forms of exploration , the way the keep you on there set path of going from point A to point B is to put 500 mobs in your way if you veer off the guided path . It slows you down so much it discourages all forms of exploration . Belsavis and Taris are proabably the worst . There are so many mobs roaming around in this game you even get attacked just from traveling the road because some idiot designer thought it would be a good idea to place them right in your way . Sometimes its good to just explore IE WoW , Rift , SWG . This game discourages you from doing that , its like they ran out of content around Belsavis and had to have a way to intentionally slow the game down with endless walking/speeder riding . Want to go from point A to point B you can forget that because if you don't go up , around and travel twice as far to get to your destination it takes you more time to fight through there endless spawns of mobs in the world . Sadly if they took half the mobs out of each planet it would feel less linear , never thought I would say that .

 

You don't feel like your visiting a planet , or that your living there , you feel like your surviving a planet . Part of Star Wars was the many different variations of the planets . From the oceans of Manaan , to the trees of Kashyykk , to the tombs of Korriban . Each city in this game feels like generic blowed up city A , generic blowed up city B , generic blowed up city C . 2 Exceptions , Tattooine , Tython .

Edited June 3, 2012 by ProphetX

[NasherUK]

That's one of the first things I noticed about the game. There is a lot of detail in the enviroment, but the world is static and none of it is interactive.

 

Before I started playing I was imagining players gambling on nar shadaa and at least some "dynamic" events, also intersecting pvp areas similar to warhammer online, but the game is 100% a linear quest grinder. They have used no new ideas what so ever gameplay wise :/

 

Right now people are just logging on for Ops and weeklys and then not for the rest of the week, which is why the game feels underpopulated. If there was some fun mini-games and other social activities to do then I think we would see a lot more online.

Edited June 3, 2012 by NasherUK

[Valkirus]

In every MMO the worlds are static and don't change and look the same day to day.

 

In LOTRO nothing changes, NPC's don't move, plants don't grow and all that happens in the sun comes up. Added to the obvious that usuall every Elf quest giver uses the same model and stands there like a statue. It's world is neither better or worse than SW:TORs.

 

The rose tinted SWG. Each and every planet was just as a lifeless area as SW:TOR. Planets did not change and were often littered with uncontrolled sprawls of player housing. It never felt alive or like a real plant in any sense and only the player interaction made things better.

 

Adding more players to a planet will not make the world feel more "alive" just make it more busy.

 

So really all the MMO's are lifeless worlds because NPC's do nothing and the worlds don't change.

 

They do in WoW. Have you played Cata expansion and seen all the changes the arrival of Deathwing had on the world? Lots and lots of enviromental changes. Plus the weather effects, sun rises, sun sets...night and daylight cycles, full moons...the suns and moon move during the day. You can see animals fighting each other...wolves killing deer, dogs barking. butterflies visiting flowers. Npc's roaming around a lot. Underwater environments which you can actually do stuff in them. I could go on and on. TOR feels very stagnant in comparison.

[thominoh]

Yes.. the worlds feel lifeless.. Everyone is off playing in their own private instances.. Is this what MMO's are becoming.?

[MentalCase]

I never played LotRO but the whole day/night and weather thing sounds really cool. I'd be up for that. Heck, I'd be up for something like an occasional sand storm on Tatooine that gives you a mini debuff or something. Just something random that would spice up the gameplay and make you think.

[JediRaffa]

I personally would like to see all of these aestics added to the game.

 

But I am wondering if the hero engine is the problem. Perhaps one has nothing to do with the other but as the engine was blamed for the reason why it cant hold a max pop then what it is set today, then perhaps it also has to do with it not being able to handle all of these aestic type effects?

 

Just a thought.

[asbalana]

According to some users this has been requested since 2008. Guess BW thinks different about it.

 

Is this true? Not that a dev should have to have the fact that the worlds are dead pointed out.

 

In answer to the OP, not only do the worlds feel lifeless, they are lifeless. In WOW, I can ride out of Stormwind and see rabbits, squirrles, wolves, bears, cows, lambs, and so on moving around and adding context to the world. A troop of guards in formation marches past me. I can see birds fly overhead and see their shadows move past me on the ground. I hear the birds chirping and the wind whooshing.

 

Beyond that there are so many things. For example, compare the mounts in Star Wars to WOW. In Star Wars they mostly look like second hand rejects from the junk yard with no animation other than two glowing points on the jets. In WOW my felsteed in comparison has fire in it's eyes and on its hooves that flame in and out, it's legs move, it's head bobs up and down, and it's tail swishes. A side view of it in motion looks like a stallion running. And that is a basic beginning mount for a Lock. Some of the more advanced mounts are just spectacular.

 

Unfortunately everything in Swtor has a dead and sterile and boxed in (linear) feeling and that is one major failing in the basic game design. I have wondered if that was a limitation of the game engine or if the devs ran out of time before launch and could not put such things in the game. But to think that this may have been a purposeful design path would just shock me.

Edited June 3, 2012 by asbalana

[Hazaz]

I think this dead quality to the environments being described is part of a larger flaw that scripted events and day/night cycles wouldn't help with. Nothing EVER changes in this game. No matter how many times you go to a certain spot on a certain planet their will always be the exact same NPC's in the exact same spot. No matter how many times you fly a space mission, the exact same enemy will appear in the exact same spot at the exact same time. There's that space mission with the asteroids? About 3:30mins into the mission, an enemy fighter appears on the right and quickly smashes into an asteroid. If you manage to shoot it before it hits the rock... you get no experience. Why? Because that ship isn't really there, it's programed to destruct, shooting it doesn't alter plan.

 

I've enjoyed playing SWTOR. Got two toons to 50, couple more over 40. But... I'm bored. There's a structured repetition to the game that grows increasingly obvious over time. I'm out. I'll keep my eye on the game, and if things get better I'll try again.

[JonJW]

I think this dead quality to the environments being described is part of a larger flaw that scripted events and day/night cycles wouldn't help with. Nothing EVER changes in this game. No matter how many times you go to a certain spot on a certain planet their will always be the exact same NPC's in the exact same spot. No matter how many times you fly a space mission, the exact same enemy will appear in the exact same spot at the exact same time. There's that space mission with the asteroids? About 3:30mins into the mission, an enemy fighter appears on the right and quickly smashes into an asteroid. If you manage to shoot it before it hits the rock... you get no experience. Why? Because that ship isn't really there, it's programed to destruct, shooting it doesn't alter plan.

 

I've enjoyed playing SWTOR. Got two toons to 50, couple more over 40. But... I'm bored. There's a structured repetition to the game that grows increasingly obvious over time. I'm out. I'll keep my eye on the game, and if things get better I'll try again.

 

Yeah the space missions are very stale now. I've done them all so many times I have them all memorized.

[xorcist]

For me it's more of a question of feeling like I am in a Star Wars environment or not. But, places like Dromund Kaas where it rains all the time, it doesn't really look or feel that way. Where are all the reflections of light from wet surfaces? The thunder clapping and so forth. The Graphical design is the issue there, not the style but the design. It looks as though it was approved with bare minimum details. Lighting, shading, environmental sounds etc. Plus, no movement. In life, just before it rains you can hear and see the the wind throwing the trees back and forth for one example. All these things need to be improved upon to give a more lifelike environment. There shouldn't be that much of a hindrance to complete what they started. Unless it is beyond the capabilities of the game engine... Edited June 3, 2012 by xorcist

[QBSlide]

Wow, this thread has far exceeded my expectations. I had no idea so many people felt the same way. I really think, as previous posters mentioned and that I failed to mention, is that more ambient sounds and at least a loop of music would go a long way in setting the scene and making the world a bit more enjoyable to live in.

[Talarchy]

So I come from SWG, and I dabbled in a little of LotRO and DC Universe. SWTOR by far has the nicest looking worlds, but there's one problem. They feel dead compared to other MMOs. Nothing ever changes. Hardly any NPCs ever move. Some may gesture, but they all stay in the same place. There's no day/night or weather cycle, so the whole world seems static.

 

I love the game for what it is, but it's hard to truly immerse myself in the world because it doesn't really feel like one. Everything feels static and lifeless to me. Am I alone?

 

No, you are not alone. I think that's the thing that kept me playing SWG for so many years, the fact the planets felt like real planets, mainly for the following reasons:

 

* No loading screens on planets.. Massive landscapes (sure, graphics a little dated now)

* Player Cities..... BH collecting, camping people in their player house... so much fun

* Mass open world PVP that spanned planets literally..

* Spaceports on each planet that let you go to any planet, from any planet (almost, excepting mustafar)

* Spaceships that were like actual space ships.. Freedom of flight, fly to another planet physically if you

want the nostalgic approach, or hyperspace...

* The allowance of hundreds and hundreds of players on a single map

* Practically zero instancing.

* Exploration - SWG allowed you to explore the landscape and find all the cool landmarks.. SWTOR makes me

run into invisible walls, or my speeder hits an "exhaustion zone"

* Most importantly... The ability to speak to the opposing faction!

[Goretzu]

Wow, this thread has far exceeded my expectations. I had no idea so many people felt the same way. I really think, as previous posters mentioned and that I failed to mention, is that more ambient sounds and at least a loop of music would go a long way in setting the scene and making the world a bit more enjoyable to live in.

 

A lot of people that found this an issue earlier on have simply quit, unfortunately.

 

We're kind of into the 2nd or even 3rd phase of people realising where the weaknesses are now, hopefully Bioware can get on top of things and solve or at least alievate these things (they couldn't solve the loading screen/travel issues, for example, but they did a decent job of aliveating them with a few changes).

[Talarchy]

A lot of people that found this an issue earlier on have simply quit, unfortunately.

 

We're kind of into the 2nd or even 3rd phase of people realising where the weaknesses are now, hopefully Bioware can get on top of things and solve or at least alievate these things (they couldn't solve the loading screen/travel issues, for example, but they did a decent job of aliveating them with a few changes).

 

I have to say it was nice when they let us use our speeders in the starport, was one thing that always pee'd me off about SWG lol...

[Descent]

No, you are not alone. I think that's the thing that kept me playing SWG for so many years, the fact the planets felt like real planets, mainly for the following reasons:

 

* No loading screens on planets.. Massive landscapes (sure, graphics a little dated now)

* Player Cities..... BH collecting, camping people in their player house... so much fun

* Mass open world PVP that spanned planets literally..

* Spaceports on each planet that let you go to any planet, from any planet (almost, excepting mustafar)

* Spaceships that were like actual space ships.. Freedom of flight, fly to another planet physically if you

want the nostalgic approach, or hyperspace...

* The allowance of hundreds and hundreds of players on a single map

* Practically zero instancing.

* Exploration - SWG allowed you to explore the landscape and find all the cool landmarks.. SWTOR makes me

run into invisible walls, or my speeder hits an "exhaustion zone"

* Most importantly... The ability to speak to the opposing faction!

 

/sign.

 

If SWG hadn't of shut down, I'd have been back there playing it a couple of months ago. SWG was intrinsically a brilliant game, full of life and character. It just lacked the subscriber base to fund remedies for the technical and frustrating problems that plagued it.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Descent

[Gungan]

They're just levels to be completed like a single player game.

[HeawiNobal]

Yes... it's because they are.

[Talarchy]

/sign.

 

If SWG hadn't of shut down, I'd have been back there playing it a couple of months ago. SWG was intrinsically a brilliant game, full of life and character. It just lacked the subscriber base to fund remedies for the technical and frustrating problems that plagued it.

 

I agree, it did have some shortcomings... but in it's 8 years I took a good few breaks, but a good solid 5 years and I have to say besides usual NGE gripes, I really do miss it now. But yeah, server pop's dropped swiftly around the 6 year mark and the last 2 years was spent server hopping, rebuilding city... rinse repeat... I started on Kettemoor, that got obliterated, then Bria, then Flurry.

 

Isn't it ironic, we only really had one PVP zone, Restuss... but that was enough lol... Sure you could go overt anywhere, but having that line there, and playing forcings back... getting over and defending 'cheeseburger hill'

then watching the next zerg come through while everyone scrambled to their buff houses so they could work on thier 5 rows of buffs lol.

 

... argh... my player houses... /cry

 

Im gonna stop now, all this is actually depressing thinking about how much more fun it was.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Talarchy

[Eillack]

I think if ToR had night/day cycles and varying weather like rain, wind, snow etc it would feel more alive. The planets feel static, for instance it's always raining on DK, the sun never sets on Tattooine, It never snows on Hoth, yet the ground is covered in it. I wouldn't say it's game breaking for me, but sometimes it's the little things like that, that can make a game feel more alive.

 

Something is wrong with your graphics setting then.

 

Dromund Kaas has a force storm, not a rain storm going. This was triggered from the disturbance of fallen sith lords' tombs.

 

But yes, night - day seqences on Tattooine, Coruscant, Taris, Voss, etc would add to the game. Or at least an afternoon/evening / day sequence for a few worlds.

 

But as it stands now. I completely dissagree with the OP. The worlds feel very lively for me, and I'm from SWG too. The worlds in TOR are way better looking than SWG ever did. TOR only lacks the day sequences.

 

No, you are not alone. I think that's the thing that kept me playing SWG for so many years, the fact the planets felt like real planets, mainly for the following reasons:

 

* No loading screens on planets.. Massive landscapes (sure, graphics a little dated now)

* Player Cities..... BH collecting, camping people in their player house... so much fun

* Mass open world PVP that spanned planets literally..

* Spaceports on each planet that let you go to any planet, from any planet (almost, excepting mustafar)

* Spaceships that were like actual space ships.. Freedom of flight, fly to another planet physically if you

want the nostalgic approach, or hyperspace...

* The allowance of hundreds and hundreds of players on a single map

* Practically zero instancing.

* Exploration - SWG allowed you to explore the landscape and find all the cool landmarks.. SWTOR makes me

run into invisible walls, or my speeder hits an "exhaustion zone"

* Most importantly... The ability to speak to the opposing faction!

 

Then you are one of the reasons why a BH system can never be made here. You griefers kill it to an extreme. The thing I hated most in SWG were spies or bounty hunters; the biggest ******es in the game for the most part. It's one thing if you have a bounty and just happend to get collected in Restuss, etc, or when nothing is happening. But it's the tools that prevent you from even playing that killed any interest to befriend or want to play as a bounty hunter. May we never see this in TOR.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Eillack