Top ten worst swtor ideas.

[Kalfear]

I stopped at #10 of the OPs list, the art is better then I expected when they told us they were designing for lower end machines. Art is FAR from the top 10 issues this game has.

 

Following is my list in no specific order! All should be fixed before the next patch as all should not be issues in ANY MMORPG made now a days. Just really basic common sense designs and items that if you look at the MMORPG genre history you understand.

 

No RP support on RP servers making them nothing more then heavily trolled PvE servers.

 

Stun Wars in PVP

I know this a Mythic thing but its bad design and is hurting the game over all.

 

Way to easy Leveling Curve

(the legacy leveling curve is more like what TOR 1-50 should have been)

 

No social games/activities to bring server communities togather

(Im still to this day at a loss how a MMORPG based on KotOR games can launch (much less go 7+ months) with out having Swoop racing and Pazzaak games added. And sadest thing is they say there is STILL no immediate plans to add the content. COMPLETELY BAFFLEING and lacking in any understanding or logic. My only guess could be some high up personally doesnt like swoop racing and Pazzaak cause there is NO LOGICAL REASON for this content to not be in game)

 

Lack of customization options on characters AFTER initial design

 

No housing/home decoration

 

Lack of DAoC style PVP despite having the perfect setting for it

 

Lack of Item wear (deminishing durabilitythrough usage) making crafted items perm use rather then creating a evolving market for the goods

 

Despite having an amazing companion concept, its mostly unrealized and under developed from what it could have been. Still unique, but far to limited and far to linear. You feel more like a person watching the story the a person involved in the companions story.

 

Massively arrogent and egotistical development team. I look at all the blunders since closed beta and just shake my head in amazement at the stuff that was done by the TOR developement team from the top down. In 21 + years Ive never seen so much closed minded arrogence and ego shown.

-Playing customers against customers.

-Telling one set of customers they more important ON MULTIPLE OCCATIONS.

-Refusing to use the forums to communicate.

-Telling Customers to STOP BOTHERING THEM WITH UNIMPORTANT THINGS (it was clealry important to your customer base or they wouldnt have been asking to begin with).

-Telling your closed beta testerss to stop sending in game feedback and just do bug reports (HORRIBLE MESSAGE TO SEND. Internally you might tell everyone to pay no attention to game feedback BUT YOU DONT TELL YOU TESTERS THAT. YOUR FUTURE CUSTOMER BASE)

 

and those just off top of head, there is many many many more examples of just arrogence outweighting common sense.

[Tuscad]

Thanks for the contribution. Have a good one.

 

I think it was a rather good contribution because the blue text is hard to read and can hurt people's eyes, you might have missed out on some potential readers with that font color. I read your post anyways but at what cost, at what cost?!

[Pcolapat]

I think it was a rather good contribution because the blue text is hard to read and can hurt people's eyes, you might have missed out on some potential readers with that font color. I read your post anyways but at what cost, at what cost?!

 

The cost for me was just highlighting his text with my cursor. However not everyone will take the time to do that and blue was not a good a choice as yellow.

[Tuscad]

The cost for me was just highlighting his text with my cursor. However not everyone will take the time to do that and blue was not a good a choice as yellow.

 

By cost I was joking around about my eyes being sore from the blue text

..................................................................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,....... ^ Looks like it is biting it's tongue, lol.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Tuscad

[Briq]

I think it was a rather good contribution because the blue text is hard to read and can hurt people's eyes, you might have missed out on some potential readers with that font color. I read your post anyways but at what cost, at what cost?!

 

and it should be noted that in his response to my "contribution" he used the default font color

[Nightspirit]

I'm not entirely convinced it was a "design choice" anymore than I'm convinced that no day/night cycle outside of Taris & Balmorra was one.

 

In both cases I suspect it may have been a "running out of development time choice".

 

On the pre-launch forums there was a development blurb shortly after all the classes were announced (so that would be sometime in '09 I think) where they stated that they chose to not go with Day/Night cycles to make the game more "cinematic". They figured that having a day/night cycle would ruin the atmosphere that they were trying to create for the planets. So the design choice for no day/might cycle was done pretty early.

[Hambunctious]

Massively arrogent and egotistical development team. I look at all the blunders since closed beta and just shake my head in amazement at the stuff that was done by the TOR developement team from the top down. In 21 + years Ive never seen so much closed minded arrogence and ego shown.

-Playing customers against customers.

-Telling one set of customers they more important ON MULTIPLE OCCATIONS.

-Refusing to use the forums to communicate.

-Telling Customers to STOP BOTHERING THEM WITH UNIMPORTANT THINGS (it was clealry important to your customer base or they wouldnt have been asking to begin with).

-Telling your closed beta testerss to stop sending in game feedback and just do bug reports (HORRIBLE MESSAGE TO SEND. Internally you might tell everyone to pay no attention to game feedback BUT YOU DONT TELL YOU TESTERS THAT. YOUR FUTURE CUSTOMER BASE)

 

and those just off top of head, there is many many many more examples of just arrogence outweighting common sense.

 

Boy howdy, that did stink. How many times did they tell us your feedback is important, but we only want to hear feedback about a certain thing, and that we're really just there to help them polish what they already have.

 

Not only did they not listen, they took out much of what most of us liked just to dumb it down for the obvious children in beta who shouldn't have been testing anyway.

[Anti_Bodies]

I love the game and im continuing to sub, but I do agree with these points. The overall direction of the game just isn't very good. However I want to give massive props for how well various features are well done. Area loot, warzones, flashpoints, finding where my quest is, lack of grind. They did a good job with that. Just the go-fetch quests, linear design, and MMO restrictions (in a game that sometimes pretends its single player) is its downfall.

 

I love the game because its Star Wars. I sub because its Star Wars.

[DarthSabreth]

OP, the only one i agree with you on is #4. at the moment not giving the player base the option / choice of which servers to move to has created some issues for players like myself. Right now all my republic toons are on Ebon Hawk. I cant move my empire toons off of Lord Adraas to ebon hawk due to space issues. So now my empire toons collect dust on a dead server.

 

Please for the love of god "Please open up free or paid Xfers off of the (ORIGIN) servers to alternitive destination servers."

 

Thank You Darth Sabreth

[Kalfear]

Boy howdy, that did stink. How many times did they tell us your feedback is important, but we only want to hear feedback about a certain thing, and that we're really just there to help them polish what they already have.

 

Not only did they not listen, they took out much of what most of us liked just to dumb it down for the obvious children in beta who shouldn't have been testing anyway.

 

Bingo on that Ham.

 

It happened in Rift as well.

 

And if you look how fast those two games went F2P (well limited F2P in RIFTS part) I can think of no better reason for future games to do away with the "random beta slot" and go back to the days of knowledge and experience gets you in faster.

 

Yes many of these kids today lie about their experience but a few well prepared questions can trick the kids into showing their hand and showing the truth about experience and knowledge of genre.

 

Other day I had a guy tell me that he grew up on BBS's and MUDs.

 

Only problem is in 1991 he was 6.

 

I dont know about anyone else but I stopped playing MUDs on BBSs in 89-90. STOPPED. Oh Muds were still around but online, not bbs's (I guess its possible a few remained after explossion of internet but seems like a stretch for a 6 year old to goto).

 

As I said, simple few questions usually show the lie (or exaggeration).

 

There is no replacing experience and knowledge and if a person only knows WOW and later, they really only know one system and style thats just been remade over and over with diminishing results each time.

[Pcolapat]

Bingo on that Ham.

 

It happened in Rift as well.

 

And if you look how fast those two games went F2P (well limited F2P in RIFTS part) I can think of no better reason for future games to do away with the "random beta slot" and go back to the days of knowledge and experience gets you in faster.

 

Yes many of these kids today lie about their experience but a few well prepared questions can trick the kids into showing their hand and showing the truth about experience and knowledge of genre.

 

Other day I had a guy tell me that he grew up on BBS's and MUDs.

 

Only problem is in 1991 he was 6.

 

I dont know about anyone else but I stopped playing MUDs on BBSs in 89-90. STOPPED. Oh Muds were still around but online, not bbs's (I guess its possible a few remained after explossion of internet but seems like a stretch for a 6 year old to goto).

 

As I said, simple few questions usually show the lie (or exaggeration).

 

There is no replacing experience and knowledge and if a person only knows WOW and later, they really only know one system and style thats just been remade over and over with diminishing results each time.

 

I must disagree with having only experienced players testing the game. Your not going to have only experienced players playing the live game, so by only having experienced players playing the beta you lose a lot of data. Also new players offer a unique perspective that experienced players do not. They can often point out the obvious before the experienced players can. Experienced players overlook some of the most basic game flaws like "Is the game fun to play?" Experienced players tend to just look at the details and not the overall experience. You can't blame inexperienced players offering bad suggestions for game design. It is the developers who have to make the decisions. There were some bad design decisions in this game. The entire philosophy and premise was flawed. That is a top down error and was not the fault of beta testers.

[Elyx]

10) disagree. personal pref there. I like cartoony. As it is, it's OK. could've use a bit more stylish art to it IMO (i.e. more cartoony!). I don't get into a game to play it like it's real life.

 

9) i don't think that the animations are sloppy. There are definitely some I don't like, but I find others very enjoyable to play. I love my Jugg's animations, as an example. now...some of the animation bugs I could do without for sure. Gear design? I agree, but for different reasons. I was hoping for more "armor-like" options on Jedi side...far too many "robes" for me. I think the big issue here is they made gear "styles" too limited. I don't see a jedi wearing pink frilly things, but there's no reason a jedi that has spent the last 2 decades fighting mandalorians wouldn't be wearing a few pieces of their armor...it's not like there's a jedi "dress code".

 

8) don't really care. I'd be fine with a 3rd option, but it really doesn't impact my game

 

7) I agree. I was hoping for far more planet oriented design. they force us onto fleet for crafting, working with cargo hold, etc. personally, I think that every planet needs easy access (at multiple points or centralized market areas) crafting trainers (including mission skills), cargo access, Daily quest hubs, etc. give us a reason to go back to the planets....heck, make each planet also have "specialties". vendors that sell nice items that only that planet has. As an example, if i was looking for the best parts for a ship, I'd probably hit Corellia for the vendors there. If i want nice Gun mods...I'd go to balmorra. want the best Crystals or hilts? tython (or Korriban). stuff like that would make it much more RPG like IMO.

 

6) I'd add this to 7 above. more planet goodies.

 

5) yeah...Ilum to me is a group of dailies. Not a PvP fan. and did we really need another ice planet?

 

4) design decision. the also had one of the smoothest rollouts I've seen in MMO history. I don't think the issue was Too many servers (though it probably was a big overkill). I think the issue was they waited far too long for the merge. It should have happened a month or two at the most. they could have merged.

 

3) they probably could have gone f2p and done fine. I agree with that. i think they wanted to try the sub model for a bit...with the initial sub numbers they had, they probably netted a ton of money off the first few months. But I would have preferred f2p initially myself.

 

2) Agree. The story is great...but you can only do that story so many times. They plunked down a TON of resources on that...which also makes the game really limited in how they adjust things. the stories are all now set in stone. Eve if 90% of the playerbase hated one aspect of a storyline, they probably wont go back and change it. having to bring back actors to re-script voices, redo plotlines (and how they are impacting the larger universe)....nifty idea but they locked themselves into a pretty harsh relationship at that point. they could boosted pillars 1 and 2 a bit more instead of putting all their cookies in one basket.

 

1) a more fully fleshed out space aspect would be great. i had a much different view of the space "combat" when I imagined the game. i was thinking of what I could do with a smugglers space skills (making extra money on cargo runs cause I know the backwater shipping routes). but a smuggler does no better then a jedi who spends most their time reading books and healing things.

 

...I really think a bulk of their issues could have been solved by pulling a portion of their budget out of paying high end actors to do the voice-overs, and instead put mroe into the side aspects of the game (crafting, space exploration, etc.) pulling a basic idea from early SWG....having known coords for the important planets is great....but what If i just want to go somewhere else?

 

let me discover a random planet...doesn't' need to be huge, just throw in a random sub-group of monsters, add some crafting nodes, and ill be golden. perhaps a few random ruins from a forgotten species. that would be awesome. actually give me a reason to be in my ship for longer then the 5 seconds it takes to go from fleet to corellia.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Elyx

[Arkerus]

10. The art style. Too cartoony. Sure there are star wars comics and cartoons out there, but those are nowhere near as cool as the movies. The art style should have been more realistic.

 

9. Sloppy animations and bad gear design. Jedi don't wear body armor. Not in George Lucas universe and they shouldn't have in Bioware's. The cut scene animations are not good enough. Too many slow swooping ships and conversations. Any time you show a cut scene with a spaceship, you entire goal should be to make the viewers jaw drop, Think awesome! And enough dialogue cut scenes. Words can be spoken with blasters and light sabers. Always go with action over dialogue. Only use duologue when there is no way for you to tell the story without it. Can you imagine how boring the star wars movies would have been if it were 90% dialogue and 10% action.

 

8. No third faction. Bounty hunters and smugglers fit better in a faction that is just in it for the money. I have played both the smuggler and the bounty hunter and I wanted so badly for the story to remain neutral, but unfortunately you have no choice in the matter. smugglers end up with the republic and the bounty hunters end up with the empire. The whole allure of those two archetypes is that they are on the fringe. Playing both sides and a bit selfish. Forcing them to fall in line with either the empire or the republic ruins what they are.

 

7. Fleet Stations. When I visit Coruscant I think how cool it would be to look at these vistas all the time instead of a dusty old space station. The fleet stations feel like a cage to me. We spend so much time there and not on the worlds we know and love. When I heard that the central hub and social areas of the game were going to be on a space station I thought "No, don't do that. That is such a terrible idea." They did it. I can only speculate why. I assume it was for stability reasons and load times. The fleet stations are utterly boring.

 

6. Segregated questing areas. This was a design choice and very bad one. In the starter areas I can see there being some segregation, but throughout the entire game? Come On. The planets with the least amount of segregation are so large that you don't run into the other faction enough. It was as if the developers did not want us fighting on these worlds. It is called Star Wars for a reason. In war there has to be conflict. When I read the book deceived Malgus even said that without conflict the empire was nothing. I say that without conflict, this game isn't star wars. We were all deceived.

 

5. Ilum. There are so many things wrong with that planet, even now. It was a joke from day one, so much of a joke they just abandoned it and removed it from the PVP menu. It was supposed to be the endgame PVP playground in this game. It was just a complete and total failure.

 

4. Spreading the players out over too many servers at launch and then having no plan in place to merge those players together when the initial rush of players subsided. This was totally inexcusable and what has hurt this game the most since launch. How many servers were there? This happened because they had this on there mind. "There is nothing more important than a smooth launch. " That my friends is short term thinking and that is what got them into a jam.

 

3. Ignoring trends and launching a subscription based MMO. There are too many F2P alternatives out there. SWTOR cannot compete with them all. When I say F2P, I am not just talking about MMOs either. SWTOR does not just compete with other MMOs. They compete with anything that could take it's subs away. That includes facebook, Playstation Games, and any other entertainment product. If a player finds themselves entertaining themselves in a way that is cheaper than fifteen dollars a month that sub is going to drop. The game should have been F2P from the start.

 

2. Pillars 1, 2, and 3. During development all we heard about was how innovative the fourth pillar was going to be. And it sure was. That was the most remarkable thing about the game. Pillars one two and three though were not all that remarkable. Standard fare at best, and on top of that many features were incomplete in those pillars. Bioware should have taken more chances with pillars one two and three. We have played those games before and we are tired of them. I can't tell you how many times I have heard players say that other than all the story content, this is pretty much like any other mmo. They stopped playing all those MMOs because they were tired of them. Bioware copy and pasted pillars one two and three. That was a huge mistake.

 

1. Lack of Space Combat. Again, this is Star Wars. Much of the action in the films was in space. Bioware completely devalued that aspect of star wars and they shouldn't have. This game should have launched with robust space combat. Dozens of ships and massively multiplayer space battles in 3 dimensions. The rail shooter nobody plays. It isn't anything special. Underwhelming to say the least. To me it is a slap in the face and I am sure it is to many others. It is like taking half of what is star wars and just not putting it in the game. If there was a whiteboard with all of the things this game had to have in it. Multi player space combat should have been right at the top. How many star wars games have there been with space combat in them...just about all of them. Bioware didn't swing and miss this one, they didn't even swing. Total fail.

 

Stopped reading at sloppy animations.

 

The combat animations are 100 times more fluid than any other game, outside of maybe AoC.

[SuperBoogly]

Number 1 - 10 Lets just copy WoW

[Briq]

Number 1 - 10 Lets just copy DAOC

 

there's a game worth playing!

[Elyx]

Number 1 - 10 Lets just copy WoW

 

Don't understand what your saying. Are you saying that the OP wants to copy WoW, or are you saying that we should just copy WoW to fix them?

[Nightspirit]

Number 1 - 10 Lets just copy WoW

 

No, they had an even better idea of "wait until WoW is past its prime and starts to decline and THEN just copy WoW instead of innovating and creating the next generation of MMO's ourselves".

[Goretzu]

No, they had an even better idea of "wait until WoW is past its prime and starts to decline and THEN just copy WoW instead of innovating and creating the next generation of MMO's ourselves".

 

Add the best bits of SWG to the best bits of SWTOR (and throw in some WAR or Planetside for RvR) and you've got a game that doesn't need F2P.

[Mallorik]

#1) by far was the space game, i dont remember an uproar of negativity about an mmo that was not even released bigger than when BW announced space on rails.

 

#2) Abandoned the combat mechanics of having off tanks and off heals and not having " just a bunch of people beating on one monster"

 

I cant give the rest of the blunders priority, just a few i can come up with off the top of my head.

 

Failure to add any kind of macro system whatso ever.

 

Thought removing the combat window in an mmo was a good idea.

 

Thought a modern themepark mmo would do fine without a LFG tool.

 

Thought Dual specs were a negative for a trinity based mmo.

 

Automaticaly dismissed cross server technology and failed to work on it.

 

The teired launch to hundreds of servers with tiny population caps and failing to think they would ever need server transfers/merges.

 

Failure to add gear and spec checks to the lfg tool.

 

One of the worse gear distribution systems i have ever seen in a AAA mmo.

 

The worse customer service i have ever seen in an mmo.

 

And on and on.

[LeonBraun]

The art style is very much a homage to the style of Ralph Mcquarrie and is indeed very much Star Wars.

 

That said, and with respect to your other points, if you feel you can do a better job, perhaps you should apply to BioWare or design your own MMO.

[LoL-K-Noob]

Zero incentive for ranked warzones. A color swap on ranked gear what a freaking joke.

[Goretzu]

Zero incentive for ranked warzones. A color swap on ranked gear what a freaking joke.

 

Well we could really do with Dye Kits.

[BlueCorsair]

Disagreed on the 'the game should have been F2P'.

 

WoW has more subscribers than every other MMO put together. EVE: Online is ten years old and still growing under a subscription-based model. Whether or not EVE or Warcraft is 'your kind of game' or not, both are consistently viewed as two of the best MMO's out there - two of the best ever made, period. Their success alone justifies the stance that subscription-based MMO's are not 'bad'. An MMORPG has to be good enough (read: has enough content) to be worth paying for, though, and simply put - this game isn't worth paying for (people have voted with their wallets). The lack of 'value per dollar' is why ToR is dropping the P2P style. The game just doesn't offer anything of enduring substance that one cannot get in some other MMO that does 'activity X' better (i.e. better raiding in WoW).

Edited August 5, 2012 by BlueCorsair

[Typeslice]

I'd have to disagree on the sloppy animations. Actually deflecting blaster fire with my lightsaber in combat? Come on man. Still makes me smile 8 months later. Edited August 5, 2012 by Typeslice

[Goretzu]

I'd have to disagree on the sloppy animations. Actually deflecting blaster fire with my lightsaber in combat? Come on man. Still makes me smile 8 months later.

 

In Dark Forces it did damage though.