Swtor, MMOs and in-between....

[lironBD]

I was thinking to myself as I almost allways getting bored once I've completed the new content in the game and as a practice I'm subbing once new content is out > playing for week or two finishing the new content > let my suv run out for few weeks or months I won't play again until new content is out.

 

So I thought to myself "Why is it I play swtor and mmos in general?" and "Why I can't enjoy the game after the new content has been processed?".

 

I'll start with short history lesson....

I began my online co-op leveling\questing\grouping experiance (which in time will become mmo) on the multiplayer mode of good old Neverwinter nights (the first one.. second one sucked bad..).

For those of you who don't know that game it was based on DND 3 (or 3.5? can't remember) and there was a single player module as "Main Campaign" to demonstrate the game capabilities but the game came with amazing toolset tool and many players became world builders using the toolset to create their own modules for single\co-op games, Arena\pvp like servers and Persistent Worlds which are pretty much like mmos this days.

 

Really amazing part of the game was using the toolset players could create some amazing things and re-create the game entierly including visual and gameplay features... some of the modules and servers of good old neverwinter nights puts todays mmos to shame.

 

anyway just to get bit more focused on NWVAULT you can see loads of modules for single\multiplayer given freely to all game owners + many more content types to the game: http://nwvault.ign.com/

 

bit more specific... let's take a look on pvp... swtor pvp is so bad becuase 2 reasons. The first is the lack of maps which makes it boring and mind numbing (open world is useless as you won't even gain valor from defeating players), second reason is we have only 4 (8 classes) which devs constantly shift in order to reach balance.

On my good old nwn days I used to pvp on amazing server called bastion of war: http://www.bastionsofwar.com/

loads of maps.... everyone starts at a fixed level to gain some abilities (which server owners fixed so it won't be game breaking... "Time stop" ) and playing on arenas gain u levels and money to get new gear. check out the website to see what a band of volounteers could do with a game toolset for free and compare it to swtor pvp.

 

on Persistent world level if we compare swtor theme park linear boring pve rail on NWN I used to play on ROLE PLAY server called cerea.

you had nice scripted quests if you wanted to bother and do them. you had npc automated guilds which you could join to access services and gear.

if you wanted an henchman you didn't get one for free every here and there you actually needed to hire them. anyway the unique part of that server comparing to SWTOR is that we had a team of GM (Dungeon masters ) which at least once a day ran a DM event which was interactive and up to 30 players could be in one team doing some awsome uniqe adventure for hours and be rewarded by powerful artifect, positions on the server npc orgonazations or even became deities if they managed to form a church and get folowers.... that pve expiriance had few things which makes swtor and other mmos this days boring like hell because they lack them.

1. Co-Op with other players was fun and was for the company not the "mechanics" of the game abusing me to have one.

2. actions taken have an effect and the world changes in kind after them. as an example on one event an army invaded some village, for few weeks later that village while you visited it was burned and looked like war zone with some known npcs dead and removed from the server. on SWTOR or any other mmos no matter what you will do world stays the same.

3. exploring was worth it! on swtor I can explore.. get fancy title and nothing more. datacron? lame *** super mario minigame. on my old nwn server while exploring I got onto an hidden quest which lead my through 20 areas up to a fire giant temple on top of a volcano where I fought a fire elemental and got a fancy magic staff which allowed me to "save" locations and teleport to them or back from them to where I was.

4. Each update was huge full of new content and areas to explore, I played years on that server and never managed to fully explore every area of the world while on swtor I can travel to all areas on one day!!!

links:

Cerea 1 (for nwn 1): http://cerea.roto.nu/

Cerea 2: (For NWN 2): http://www.cerea2.com/

both server died with nwn, but that server and world was so amazing and so many stories were created by players choices that a BOOK was written using that content: http://www.cerea2.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=48

 

on some point of the timeline WOW was released, the idea of paying a monthly fee for a game was unthinkable... "Why should I pay twice or more for a single game?" mmos were'nt that known around my parts but I tried it a bit. and dear lord played for month or so got level 29 and seen that the whole game was railroaded get to mission hub somewhere dosome qusets and move to next mission hub. my Co-Op experiance with other players was an instance where everyone ran everywhere and I had no idea *** is going on and ofc an angle of doom flying on his mount landing near me and ganking me. game was sad boring, ugly and sucks. I left wow.

 

few years past I started playing SWTOR and I really loved the game flow back at the day before cartel market hit us and F2P came in... it was simple and all but first point of hardship was when I realized that this wasn't a persistent world or something to explore\play with other people this was a single player game with limited content which once reached max level your only hope is to roll another toon trying something else.. I mean why? I worked hard to create my character I would like it to continue and be my focus in the game not rolling alts :X

for me at least swtor is fun game while I get new things to do but they rate in which new content is arriving is sad slow, very slow in fact.

most of the mechanics in the game like crafting, dyes, mounts and all we had on nwn1 servers ages ago yet they takes many long months to be released in swtor, content even takes longer. for me the expactaion was that a story content (like makeb or shroud line) will be released once a month so each month I sub I get something new to do but instead we are being choked with cartel market and vanity\visual contents worth nothing at all except 2 seconds of "oh shiny!" and that's it.

 

In between swtor subs I tried EVE Online. Now, eve is not MMO game, Eve is an MMO simulator of space community where people will do all they can including scaming, ganking, lies and stealing as much as they can in order to get more money so they can improve their set of tools to do the same things over but on larger scale.

I can't even start telling you about which kind of people playing eve online and how sick they are beyond reason, Eve itself as mechanics goes takes ages to do anything because of the "Time based training" where you set your skill q to train something and have to wait real life time. some skills takes 2 months! to train... real life 2 months! also if you are not careful you can lose skills you have trained if you don't have a clone upgraded to the amount of skill points you have. All in all Eve is a simulator of what human race will do unchecked without rules of society... it looks like water-world with those sick bikers pirates on the oil ship :X sad sight.

 

I would like to conclude this discussion with the fact that for me at least SWTOR is not mmo. it's a single player game with some ester-eggs features which allows players to co-op in the missions or demand co-op on some missions. Nothing you will do outside of the scripted quest system of instanced system (WZ included) has any effect at all or has any meaning, SWTOR is no more mmo then a co-op mod of some single player titles.

That fact is very sad one as I really like the concept of KOTOR style online game (I never played SWG!) and thought myself when kotor was released that it will be an awesome game. but instead we got KOTOR 3 with monthly fee\gimped F2P mod. If swtor was single player game with some features like FP or OPS or even WZ on separate multiplayer menu it would have been an amazing game but as an mmo it's lackluster.

 

This is not a quit thread I'm still here (mostly when new contents comes out) but a thread with feedback which I hope bioware team will read, learn and try to make some additions to the game which allow it to become more immersive and fun.

 

TL;DR China wants it's wall back.

[lironBD]

Bump?

 

cause you should really write on the wall

 

seriously what do you think?

[ImpactHound]

People REALLY want a good sci-fi MMO. Sega refuses to translate Phantasy Star Universe 2 & I refuse to learn moonrunes. Wildstar might end up satisfying a lot of people. TOR is looking alot like Galaxies did in it's last 4 years, standing on the license alone.

[lironBD]

I never played swg.. but you want to tell me that after 1 year swtor is in bad state like swg did in it's decline?

[ImpactHound]

I never played swg.. but you want to tell me that after 1 year swtor is in bad state like swg did in it's decline?

 

A lot of people who played SWG in that twilight time would have argued that it was never in decline, but I see similarities. Galaxies had hangers-on that thought the game would never end, until TOR was announced and people assumed you couldn't have two sub games dipping into the same fanbase. There's no "other" Star Wars MMO on the horizon but unless some incredible new features are added, the current model is going to maintain and trickle out the existing playerbase for a few years until Disney decides to either fight for the license to be pulled or just release a competing product to reboot Star Wars sub dollars in another project. Or an exceptional sci-fi title from another company will just lure players away, a lot of MMO players are just burnt out on swords-n-sorcery fantasy(or never liked it in the first place).

 

This is all anecdotal and I could be entirely wrong, just my thoughts on seeing how great SWG was at launch and watching it get twisted into something awful because the developers couldn't keep their heads on straight.

[lironBD]

but swtor was never "Great" as mmo. all co-op content was and is scripted and everything is so scripted and linear in a way that is giving a feeling of single player games.

Actually some single player games (like elder scrolls series) got more freedom then swtor. I can play skyrim and swotr on same time and I'll never be able to finish entire skyrim content while I actually finished swtor entire content with 7 classes !

 

MMO should have some kind of gameplay mechanics to give people things to do together in un-boring way or the whole multiplayer thing is meh.

[ImpactHound]

but swtor was never "Great" as mmo. all co-op content was and is scripted and everything is so scripted and linear in a way that is giving a feeling of single player games.

Actually some single player games (like elder scrolls series) got more freedom then swtor. I can play skyrim and swotr on same time and I'll never be able to finish entire skyrim content while I actually finished swtor entire content with 7 classes !

 

MMO should have some kind of gameplay mechanics to give people things to do together in un-boring way or the whole multiplayer thing is meh.

 

I agree, I felt that way in beta testing. I am not at all looking forward to the Elder Scrolls MMO, because the series at its heart is about elevating the single player to near godhood in each game, or anything else they might want to develop as. The leaked footage as is looks pretty awful. I really like Elder Scrolls single player games as they are now.

 

As much as people want to bash WoW, they do a good job of trying to encourage more multiplayer gameplay in a lot of different ways. They came out with the shorter role-forgiving Scenarios for Mists of Pandaria so if you didn't like how hardocre dungeons are, you get a similar experience with smaller freeform groups. More voice acting and storylines, too.

 

They put in pet battles which players have embraced. If you hate Pokemon, good for you. A lot of people really like it, otherwise it wouldn't have made Gamefreak and Nintendo trillionaires. It's really surprising when you would normally get ganked when a level 90 comes across you open world, but because you have a cool pet out and they stop and start emoting you, and try battling you with that system instead.

 

They made the solo Brawler's Guild where even though it's solo content, it's a shared experience with onlookers and you get bragging rights as you do tough boss fights with an audience.

 

Next patch has a training mode where if you want to learn to tank or heal, but are nervous about screwing up with a live group, you can practice with NPCs in a scripted scenario. You go thru bronze, silver and gold difficulties to teach you the basics and have typical 'real player' situations at you without getting raged at, and then they offer an endless mode so you can show your skills off. Sounds great for opening the door to new tanks and healers to keep the queues down.

[lironBD]

thinking about that even as single player game the fact is that around 1 hour of total cutscenes\gameplay story (no more then 3 top if we skip the gameplay time) are unique to each class. over all the puzzles in the game or unique missions are pretty lackluster and 90% of the game is kill\collect X bring it to Y. actually playing NWN2 single player game with new class\build combo is much more interesting or full of variety then playing a new alt on swtor which single player pve experiance should be it's best.

 

I mean play Marauder dps or Vanguard tank gameplay is not that different... few tweaks and different abilities. On NWN2 for example play a pure wizard or Rogue you get entierly different expiriance gameplay wise. heck swtor don't even use crew skills for gameplay mechanic or something, I remember good old NWN days playing on a server with my rogue I could use traps, lockpicking etc... on swtor? u got slicing\archeology\scavanging\bioanalysis level X you can open a shortcut... that's it. pretty mind numbing coming from bioware the company which brought us BG\NWN\Mass Effect... where are he interesting puzzles? after 10 hours killing mobs killing more mobs and collecting yellow drops pve is truly pain.

[CosmicKat]

Technically, the first Bioware NWN was actually the second NWN. One of the first MMO's was NWN on AOL.

 

I'll agree that TOR is mostly a solo game, but apparently that's what people want in an MMO nowadays. That is the theory. The fact is that between 75-90% of those who bought the MMO called SW:TOR quit it within 3-6 months. This would seem to indicate that people, in fact, either do not really want their MMO to be a mostly solo game, or they don't want it to be this particular solo game.

[lironBD]

Ha really didn't knew about that neverwinter nights aol thing.

 

about 3-6 months frame....

3 months is the time took me with 1 character to do all the missions in game + all group content.

6 months is the time took me do it with another 6 alts (so 7 characters).

 

I guess people just tries out the game finish the available content and move on. problem is content updates are slowpoke truly...

on my nwn PW server when some event happened or something they added a content equivalent to the world events on swtor in an hour or two... there was a dm gameplay zone and tools to create stuff out of no where until server reset removed them. Actually I can't remember ever to encounter a bioware staff playing as GM with npcs on swtor ever....

 

So what we left with is a very static world with not much to do in after you finished your missions, nothing at all to do after you got the top high end augmented gear.

 

they really need to spice it up.

[Six-Echo]

People REALLY want a good sci-fi MMO. Sega refuses to translate Phantasy Star Universe 2 & I refuse to learn moonrunes. Wildstar might end up satisfying a lot of people. TOR is looking alot like Galaxies did in it's last 4 years, standing on the license alone.

 

Actually the numbers wanting a sci-fi MMO aren't as high as you think... I know a ton of people not playing any MMO's right now because they are fed up with WoW and LOTRO but don't really like Star Wars.. so they are just waiting for Wildstar and ESO and EQ Next. I'm basically just killing time here myself. I like Star Wars but this genre gets boring to me very fast, especially at end-game.