Story Syndrome

[ShatteredVision]

Upon deciding I might as well give Guild Wars 2 a try recently (despite major doubt I'll like it), a strange thought occurred to me.

 

There are plenty of reasons I unsubed this game, I won't go into them. I'm just wondering whether anyone else feels they might have a problem with something down the road. I've begun to think I'll probably hate most of the coming mmos, for lack of story. Was it perfect in swtor? No, of course not. Still, it was engrossing and fun. It made the same boring leveling quests actually enjoyable. You didn't get a lot of repercussions for your choices, but even HAVING choices - however limited - was too good to be true, in retrospect. The clips I've seen from other coming titles can't touch it. I made a reunion tour of Rift, and felt incredibly put off by the idea that the entire interaction for this quest will consist of me NOT reading an npc's text. Of course, swtor will soon be giving it away for free.. All I can do is laugh. It's just silly.

 

I honestly feel like swtor, despite it's GLARING faults, is going to ruin other games for me for quite some time. If they ever get more than the story right, I'll come running back.

 

Sincerely,

 

A soon to be GW2'er who couldn't be any less excited about it

[DarthOvertone]

I'm just wondering whether anyone else feels they might have a problem with something down the road. I've begun to think I'll probably hate most of the coming mmos, for lack of story. Was it perfect in swtor? No, of course not. Still, it was engrossing and fun.

 

Well, if my experience is any indication (having returned to some of my previous MMOs), leveling a toon in another game now is much more tedious than you would have thought. I didn't realize how much I really enjoyed the story and leveling experience in SWTOR until I went back and just goofed around with leveling toons in the other MMOs I'm still associated. I tried it for a day and quickly returned to SWTOR and just rolled alts. lol

 

It's really that bad. The PvP in GW2 is going to be quite fun, but you are going to hate the PvE part of it.

[SpazCats]

Upon deciding I might as well give Guild Wars 2 a try recently (despite major doubt I'll like it), a strange thought occurred to me.

 

There are plenty of reasons I unsubed this game, I won't go into them. I'm just wondering whether anyone else feels they might have a problem with something down the road. I've begun to think I'll probably hate most of the coming mmos, for lack of story. Was it perfect in swtor? No, of course not. Still, it was engrossing and fun. It made the same boring leveling quests actually enjoyable. You didn't get a lot of repercussions for your choices, but even HAVING choices - however limited - was too good to be true, in retrospect. The clips I've seen from other coming titles can't touch it. I made a reunion tour of Rift, and felt incredibly put off by the idea that the entire interaction for this quest will consist of me NOT reading an npc's text. Of course, swtor will soon be giving it away for free.. All I can do is laugh. It's just silly.

 

I honestly feel like swtor, despite it's GLARING faults, is going to ruin other games for me for quite some time. If they ever get more than the story right, I'll come running back.

 

Sincerely,

 

A soon to be GW2'er who couldn't be any less excited about it

 

lol! Unfortunately you have a very good point. I never thought about it that way. I'm going to be trying GW2 out as well, but I don't have really high hopes for it keeping me for the long term. And yeah, I will miss a good class storyline with well done voice overs.

 

And true that "If they ever get more than the story right, I'll come running back. "

[ShatteredVision]

I'm trying GW2 for two reasons, really. The first, is because there's nothing else to try that I haven't tried already. The second, is pvp. That was my biggest personal issue with this game. I don't really pve much, which is also why I'm so certain the story part of it all will be devastating in other games. It made a part of mmo's I usually don't care for, actually be fun.

 

Time will tell I guess. I feel like world vs world will make me pretty happy. I've mentioned before, I have more toons in swtor than any of my past mmos COMBINED. Asheron's Call was my first, '99 I think. I'm not one to make alts. Again, the story in this game made it too hard not to...combined with little endgame, of course.

[Rewte]

Op I think you hit the nail on the head. I, however, am still enjoying the game and I haven't quite used it up yet but I do feel a bit worried about other MMOs that aren't quite as story driven. At least it shows us that SWTOR got something right.

[Gwena]

I do see where you are coming from, OP. The story in TOR is amazing and I think it spoils us!

 

But, depending on the game, I don't think it will be an issue for me. One of the main reasons I love the story is the cutscenes, because I can see my characters in beautiful graphics and detail as opposed to their blah out-of-cutscene appearance. However, in other games this might not be an issue because my characters look beautiful and detailed all the time, and I don't need fancy cinematics to see them at their best.

 

And though I really do enjoy the story, there are many aspects of it (depending on the class, I suppose) that I felt really limited my ability to make my characters my own and essentially "create" them. The story is a double edged sword in the character development department -- it makes your characters seem more real and like, well, characters, but it also gives them a set story line, set supporting cast (Companions), etc. Even their voices and manner of speech allude to a certain personality type. For example, I wanted to make a perky, sweet-as-sugar yet highly dangerous female Bounty Hunter. Sure, I can make her look cute and perky in character creation, but as soon as she opens her mouth to talk, there goes that idea! And there are just so many of these fully voiced cut scenes that it is hard to ignore. Which, again, can be a good thing or not.

 

Of course, this isn't an issue for people that don't like to create their own characters, but I don't think it is solely a "RP'er" thing either (I don't RP). So while I totally get what you mean about missing the awesome TOR story, I will both miss it and not miss it depending on the character.

[Katsuragisama]

Upon deciding I might as well give Guild Wars 2 a try recently (despite major doubt I'll like it), a strange thought occurred to me.

 

There are plenty of reasons I unsubed this game, I won't go into them. I'm just wondering whether anyone else feels they might have a problem with something down the road. I've begun to think I'll probably hate most of the coming mmos, for lack of story. Was it perfect in swtor? No, of course not. Still, it was engrossing and fun. It made the same boring leveling quests actually enjoyable. You didn't get a lot of repercussions for your choices, but even HAVING choices - however limited - was too good to be true, in retrospect. The clips I've seen from other coming titles can't touch it. I made a reunion tour of Rift, and felt incredibly put off by the idea that the entire interaction for this quest will consist of me NOT reading an npc's text. Of course, swtor will soon be giving it away for free.. All I can do is laugh. It's just silly.

 

I honestly feel like swtor, despite it's GLARING faults, is going to ruin other games for me for quite some time. If they ever get more than the story right, I'll come running back.

 

Sincerely,

 

A soon to be GW2'er who couldn't be any less excited about it

 

Yeah, I feel SW:TOR's story cutscenes was the reason I actually made it to level cap in this game. The main story for the Sith Inquisitor was fun, and I enjoyed it. The issue that fans know, and both the Executive Producer and General Manager confirmed, is that it is impossible for them to make story content quickly with having to do cutscenes, backgrounds, getting the same people to do the voice overs. It's just impossible for them to release content like that very quickly, and its very costly.

 

GW2 might only have a backdrop for the diaglog, and then cutscenes for more important things, as voice overs, but they will be able to do content much more quickly. Not to mention the engine they used to make GW, expanded upon, and made GW2 with.

 

As Shattered said above me, I'm also going for the sPvP/WvWvW. Warzones here have grown boring, and theres nothing to break up the PvP monotony. And OWPvP like Ilum, is just something this game cannot handle. I'm not so sure that it will ever be able to handle it. Though we were promised massive 100 vs 100 battles, the engine cant handle 20 vs 20.

 

But I also have other reasons which I wont get into, as not to to derail the thread.

 

Edit to add: There's also everything Gwena outlined above. The story doesnt really make you feel original. Where as GW2 your story actually branches out from the choices you make at creation as well as playing through the story.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Katsuragisama

[TUXs]

Meh...not really for me...Once I realized every quest still amounted to "go here and find/kill X things", it didn't really matter how it was dressed up and presented...I missed absolutely nothing by skipping the dialog, no hints, no clues, when the NPC finished talking, it was just like every other game made since W0W.

[DarthVengeant]

Lack of story heh.

 

Well, this game may have "Story", but it still gets to be an utter and complete bore once you hit about lvl 30. Then, once you hit 50 its BEYOND boring. All you do is the same few dailies, PVP, OPs, and Flashpoints over and over again. So, "story" may matter, but honestly there isn't as much of it in this game as there should have been.

[Rhynien]

Lack of story heh.

 

Well, this game may have "Story", but it still gets to be an utter and complete bore once you hit about lvl 30. Then, once you hit 50 its BEYOND boring. All you do is the same few dailies, PVP, OPs, and Flashpoints over and over again. So, "story" may matter, but honestly there isn't as much of it in this game as there should have been.

 

This, especially, the bolded. But beyond that, the rest is pretty spot on, too. I have two 50s at the moment. My Sage, I dinged on probably sometime in February. I forget the exacts. After that, I took a several month (still subbed) hiatus because I'd frankly burned out on just how dull the questing had gotten after about Tatooine. It didn't help that I picked Consular as my first class and that is just not a story I can really get into. But I digress.

 

So I had a Agent alt. Thought changing up factions would help some, but it really doesn't. Around 30, I hit the same wall. I don't know if there's an underlying game mechanic issue at work (maybe it's a point where mob HP spikes, or overall difficulty?), or if it's because it gets harder to find groups at that point and you have to start skipping Heroics and ending up behind-ish, but I had to force myself to continue leveling. If it had not been for the sheer quality of Act 2 and 3 of Agent's story, I wouldn't even have my second 50. The sidequests aren't different enough on the worlds the factions do line up on, time wise, to matter. In fact, Tatooine shares a handful of quests between factions. Blood and Sand, The Thing That Czerka Found, etc. I can't remember if the names are different, but I distinctly remember doing both on my Sage.

 

Although I would really like to see/finish my Marauder's story before GW2, I don't think I'll be able to pull it off. I'm 36 and starting Taris--intentionally overleveling hoping to make it better, but it hasn't. It has gotten to the point that I actually had my brother bring a lowbie of his and follow me out to Belsavis where the two reachable-for-him Dailies were, to see if it's at all possible to powerlevel someone. It isn't. He received no exp for me having completed the quests in question, and the mob exp wasn't substantially better than if he was killing things on level. I didn't bother to test if dropping group and assisting kills from outside on elites his level would be any better, but I sincerely doubt it. Space isn't that great for exp, in my opinion, certainly not like it was. The initial run is the only one I'd consider worth it, especially later on when you get melted down easily unless everything is just so. And if you aren't into PvP (which I'm not. I don't like it, I'm not competitive, and I'm probably terrible at it and would be a burden) then that leaves no venue *but* questing. And FP queues, but forget that being timely if you aren't healing/tanking. You're better off questing.

 

The Legacy exp perks are a joke, frankly. 30% total bonus on Story quest, when that makes up maybe 10% of the total exp you get, is laughable. It amounts to nothing in the end, and isn't worth the credits spent on it. The only place I see it being viable is perhaps the PvP and Space versions. I had been under the impression before these perks were released that they were meant to allow you to level the way you wish to level. As is, I don't think any of them really provides you a way to level through whichever you pick alone. Certainly not at a timely pace. And seeing what they cost, and the fact that they're only of use to an alt, one would think they would be much more substantial than what they are.

 

TL;DR: Somewhere in the 30 range, this game becomes tedious to level on. Even for a first character, but certainly the second onward. Even if you flip factions. I can't pin down a specific reason for the feeling, but I've had it since my first run through the game. Most games, I don't run into that wall until the last few levels, and then it's of relatively short duration and easily overcome. And the perks meant to let us level our alts in different fashions, don't do so. I would love to have a way to level through story alone to finish up the last couple class quests I care to see.

 

So yeah, I'll be on another hiatus after GW2 hits, if only to see how that game is. I enjoyed the first, and grinding random rifts in Rift actually *did* amuse me, and provided with other ways to level than the same quests. I had several capped characters without running into the frustrations I have here. Even if it's the same 'random events' looping, it's something.

[MarvelZombie]

Gotta agree with the OP: one of my first reactions to GW2 in the first beta weekend was 'wow...these personal story cutscenes are terrible compared to SWTOR". Everything from the voices to the dialogue to the lack of visual panache screamed 'amateur' to me after playing SWTOR this year. If I hadn't played SWTOR, I probably would've thought they were great and/or groundbreaking.

 

At least BW did something right here...

[DarthScruffy]

Well, if my experience is any indication (having returned to some of my previous MMOs), leveling a toon in another game now is much more tedious than you would have thought. I didn't realize how much I really enjoyed the story and leveling experience in SWTOR until I went back and just goofed around with leveling toons in the other MMOs I'm still associated. I tried it for a day and quickly returned to SWTOR and just rolled alts. lol

 

It's really that bad. The PvP in GW2 is going to be quite fun, but you are going to hate the PvE part of it.

 

That's why I really think this game gets a bum rap. There hasn't been another game that I wanted to level up alts in. STO was a complete fail when they ran out of content. I still have content that'll last till November.

[Evensong]

I logged for a while to my former mmos EQ2 and LOTRO and could not stay more then 5 minutes there. Boring comparing to this game. I am not going to even try GW2, watched lots of vidoes and it's just not for me.

I leveled 4 sith warriors LOL - the storyline is just too good. I think I will start to level them, delete and level again... sigh. I have all other classes af course too LOL. On two servers /grin

SWTOR!!!!! What did you do to me!!!!!!!!! I can't even imaging playing any other game!!!!!!!

[Tahrl]

Haha! I SW:TOR can't have you, it'll ruin every other game for you. This game is turning out to be an awful lot like marmite, I've found. You either love it, or you hate it.

[ShatteredVision]

I agree with the negative stuff mentioned a good bit, too, but if I wanted to make a thread to trash the game I easily could have. I've had a good time playing this game - maybe because I felt I was playing a single player game. Friends and I formed our guild pre-launch. I've been the only one playing (occasionally) for the last couple of months. There is more wrong than right here, I can admit that without trouble.

 

The problem is, what they DID get right, is almost TOO right. That is the point of the thread, not what's wrong (and there's a lot). Whether the game has fallen short or not, it says something that it might ruin an entire genre for me for a little while. Despite little interest in pve, the story was as much fun as I've had in an mmo in a long time. If a future mmo is to copy anything from this one, I'm more than certain it will be that.

 

And, as far as alting, it's been fun, but that isn't enough. I have more toons in this game than all others combined,NOT because it's fun, though. I have them because there's nothing worthwhile at 50. I don't like alting, I never have. I like to make 1 character and play him balls out.

[oakamp]

lol! Unfortunately you have a very good point. I never thought about it that way. I'm going to be trying GW2 out as well, but I don't have really high hopes for it keeping me for the long term. And yeah, I will miss a good class storyline with well done voice overs.

 

And true that "If they ever get more than the story right, I'll come running back. "

 

me too,

my friends too,

we dont like fantasy MMO,

and gw2's characters' walking is too cartoon,

we dont know how long that gw2 will keep our interesting,

but swtor has too much grind in endgame, bugs, and low performance,

if swtor can provide more great stuff like lv1~49 experience again,

we might be back,

we might be sub again,

we do like starwars,

we do love kotor,

dont let swtor die,

make it great again, BW,

we miss the black island , the whole company.

 

i know interplay register ur logo on internet recently,

but the kernel team members r not there,

their spirits r not there.

[HanStyle]

its like they are begging us to move gw 2

[Rafaman]

Interesting point OP. I think SWTOR's contribution to the advancement of MMO mechanics is exactly that, story. I look forward to what others and BW come up with next along these lines. I think the combination of a great story including branching that shapes your toon as you level up is now going to be the norm.

[Yndras]

Yeah, I feel SW:TOR's story cutscenes was the reason I actually made it to level cap in this game. The main story for the Sith Inquisitor was fun, and I enjoyed it. The issue that fans know, and both the Executive Producer and General Manager confirmed, is that it is impossible for them to make story content quickly with having to do cutscenes, backgrounds, getting the same people to do the voice overs. It's just impossible for them to release content like that very quickly, and its very costly.

 

GW2 might only have a backdrop for the diaglog, and then cutscenes for more important things, as voice overs, but they will be able to do content much more quickly. Not to mention the engine they used to make GW, expanded upon, and made GW2 with.

 

As Shattered said above me, I'm also going for the sPvP/WvWvW. Warzones here have grown boring, and theres nothing to break up the PvP monotony. And OWPvP like Ilum, is just something this game cannot handle. I'm not so sure that it will ever be able to handle it. Though we were promised massive 100 vs 100 battles, the engine cant handle 20 vs 20.

 

But I also have other reasons which I wont get into, as not to to derail the thread.

 

Edit to add: There's also everything Gwena outlined above. The story doesnt really make you feel original. Where as GW2 your story actually branches out from the choices you make at creation as well as playing through the story.

 

The problem with Guild wars 2's model is that there will be no conent updates until a new expansion is released. THat is how they did gw1 and it will be how gw2 is done. The game is a cash grab, it will try and sell as many units as possible and then it will go quiet.

[Rhynien]

The problem with Guild wars 2's model is that there will be no conent updates until a new expansion is released. THat is how they did gw1 and it will be how gw2 is done. The game is a cash grab, it will try and sell as many units as possible and then it will go quiet.

 

That's possible. Even entirely likely. I wasn't in GW2's beta, and have not even remotely been keeping up with interviews on this particular topic. It was, as you say, how GW1 was done. But I ask this: How's that any different from TOR? The updates so far have just been (as I've posted before) shades of Rift. Dungeons and Raids. Flashpoints and Ops. If you're into that, it's pretty decent content-addition-speed. If you're here just for the story then there hasn't been anything of note added to the game since launch, and there won't be, at least until Makeb. Seeing as how Makeb is just a world arc, and some of us want character story updates, not world ones, it is going to be a very long, dry stretch to the next expansion before we have anything that caters to our reason for being here.

 

I had been leery of buying TOR before launch, it was only reading about the depth of the individual class stories that finally convinced me to try it. It is, really, the only unique thing Bioware brought to the MMO 'table', and they did it very well. The fact that these stories are still on hold until some undisclosed point in the future (probably late next year) gives me very little motivation to stay. Of the two stories I did, only one really stuck with me. I have two remaining that I really wish to see. One of which is about 2/3 done. That leaves me with enough content for a couple of months if I stretch it out and level slowly. What then?

 

For me, even if GW2 only updates at expansions, it won't be any different of a feeling for me than TOR, because the story arcs for my characters is apparently only going to do the same: update at expansions. The in-between stuff is largely irrelevant to me. The fact that there's less VA and cutscenes (I'm assuming, here, again I've not even watched many vids on the game yet. Ha. I try to avoid hype. ;p) in GW2 could possibly mean that whatever serves for class/character story there will at least get updated faster, even if it's not as good.

 

At this point, I'll take what I can get. I love TOR's stories, but when you hit 50, that's it. And you hang there, until we finally get the ex-pack announcement.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Rhynien

[Skorz]

That's possible. Even entirely likely. I wasn't in GW2's beta, and have not even remotely been keeping up with interviews on this particular topic. It was, as you say, how GW1 was done. But I ask this: How's that any different from TOR? The updates so far have just been (as I've posted before) shades of Rift. Dungeons and Raids. Flashpoints and Ops. If you're into that, it's pretty decent content-addition-speed. If you're here just for the story then there hasn't been anything of note added to the game since launch, and there won't be, at least until Makeb. Seeing as how Makeb is just a world arc, and some of us want character story updates, not world ones, it is going to be a very long, dry stretch to the next expansion before we have anything that caters to our reason for being here.

 

I had been leery of buying TOR before launch, it was only reading about the depth of the individual class stories that finally convinced me to try it. It is, really, the only unique thing Bioware brought to the MMO 'table', and they did it very well. The fact that these stories are still on hold until some undisclosed point in the future (probably late next year) gives me very little motivation to stay. Of the two stories I did, only one really stuck with me. I have two remaining that I really wish to see. One of which is about 2/3 done. That leaves me with enough content for a couple of months if I stretch it out and level slowly. What then?

 

For me, even if GW2 only updates at expansions, it won't be any different of a feeling for me than TOR, because the story arcs for my characters is apparently only going to do the same: update at expansions. The in-between stuff is largely irrelevant to me. The fact that there's less VA and cutscenes (I'm assuming, here, again I've not even watched many vids on the game yet. Ha. I try to avoid hype. ;p) in GW2 could possibly mean that whatever serves for class/character story there will at least get updated faster, even if it's not as good.

 

At this point, I'll take what I can get. I love TOR's stories, but when you hit 50, that's it. And you hang there, until we finally get the ex-pack announcement.

 

Well hey the good thing is that now that the SWTOR will go F2P the story will be absolutely free. So if somewhere in a year 3548 or so they manage to complete act 4, you can just come back, do those class quests for free then go back to GW2.. that is my plan anyways

Edited August 24, 2012 by Skorz

[Diktat]

The problem with Guild wars 2's model is that there will be no conent updates until a new expansion is released. THat is how they did gw1 and it will be how gw2 is done. The game is a cash grab, it will try and sell as many units as possible and then it will go quiet.

ANet said there's going to be content updates on regular basis (I read somewhere their plan is do it monthly) and release an expansion every 18 months.

[DrowNoble]

Well I have to say that SWTOR patches being like Rift's are inaccurate. First off, Trion has released more content patches with more "meat" than Bioware has. Many Rift patches had content that wouldn't just be for capped players. Seriously, we have had 2 temporary world events, a poorly-done Legacy system full of pointless money sinks and a new warzone. The Finder is nice, but not something that I ever really needed to use (when I want to run a FP, I go to the fleet and advertise).

 

Back on topic, I agree that SWTOR has shown that Story can be viable in an mmo. It's one of the reasons that leveling another character seemed "different" in that my Agent was doing something different on a specific planet than my Inquisitor was. I've noticed how lacking some mmos feel now, with the exception of TSW, without voiceovers. I can blame Bioware for that.

 

If GW2 can do the dynamic content of Rift combined with the Story telling of SWTOR, it's going to be a huge hit. However, quite often mmos fail to live up to the hype. SWTOR being a good example of this.

 

As a side note, I'll comment on adding new Stories. It's been said that it will be hard and expensive to, say, do a Chapter 4. I don't agree with this. Voice over work can be done anywhere, the actors don't have to come to Bioware. An actor could voice his lines in London and the data be sent to Bioware. Adding Chapter 4 should of been something that Bioware planned on at launch, but it's obvious they weren't prepared for how much maintenance an mmo requires. Hence the lack of updates and lack of content in said updates.

[Diktat]

My disappointment with GW2 cutscenes came from how different were from GW1 cutscenes (thus SWTOR's were not new for me) but it was not a big deal. What amtters in GW2 cutscenes is the choices which efectively takes you to different paths.

[Lazzer]

In regard to the OP I agree, I think playing another MMO without the VO and story will leave me feeling the same way Age of Conan did after I completed Tortage and the VO system stopped, the game simply died on me and I ended up quitting.