I want to be clear that I am NOT arguing that SWTOR should be just like SWG - as numerous people have pointed out, there were a ton of big flaws in SWG ranging from class imbalances to a lack of story content, etc. However, if SWTOR forces players through a linear story and doesn't allow players wide open exploration, it won't be a game that I'll be playing.
It would be a game that many won't be playing. A huge portion of the MMO community plays these games because they are large explorable virtual worlds. They must have exploration in mind if the want to, actually, maintain customer subscriptions. If it ends up being nothing more than a glorified linear experience then after one play-through you'll see the customer base dwindle away. I can't imagine this would be something they would overlook.
When the first footage was released, months ago, many people were impressed by the graphics anjd receptive to the 'cartoony style' in which the game was cast. That said, almost everyone complained that about the size of the lightsabers which looked like the toons were holding giant 'liter o' cola' bottles and the strange, almost insectoid shape of the toons themselves with their tiny wiasts and huge thoraxes. The designers said, as designers always say, they they had heard the feedback and would react to it but, from what I have seen in the 'Designing The Dark Side' footage the lightsaber handles are still the same size and the toons are still the same shape. Is that right - or do you think chyanges have been made?
to the challenge thing i say no mmo has ever been really challenging. you either feel weak or powerful. i like how swtor looks in teh videos like your going to be powerful vs mobs. in teh movies there were few enemies that were a challenge to the main characters. and in recent mmos that have made the PC weaker compared to mobs combat has been boring and long instead of fun and rewarding.
i don't mind if swtor is a bit linear as long as there are multiple paths or playing through a different class as an alt is somewhat different and still fun.
swg had alot of problems in how it set up it's large worlds. they were boring and nonsensical for one. most people stayed on tattooine and the other worlds were deserted for two.
the class balance in swg was horrible melee toons which were major IP breakers (for me at least) were super strong and could do things that took dozens of ranged players to do. sure jedis should've been really strong and were, but a martial artist in the star wars universe? that kill anything in seconds with his bare hands when it take 20 guy with blasters minutes to do the same thing?
hopefully all classes in swtor will be equally powerful. the only time i should feel weak is in pvp against a stronger player or when fighting a boss that takes 5 to 25 players to take on.
if luke skywalker could do it, or han solo could do it, so should i be able to. these characters didn't have super powers. luke wasn't asuper jedi. if swtor does this it will succeeed where swg failed in my eyes. in swg storm troopers that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the movies were super accurate one hit kills you unless you were a certain build.
I don't foresee Bioware making the worlds too confined. There should be enough there for the explorer purists.
I see the opposite. Both Kotors, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are all played out in confined worlds. That doesn't make them bad games by any means just slightly frustrating since playability is so good you wish there was more of it spread out over larger areas.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
The more I read about this game the more I am both impressed and completely frustrated by what I hear at the same time. First, the impressive parts. The production values look fantastic. The look of the world, the look of characters, the look of combat; all seem incredible - a thousand times better than SWG. I have no doubts that combat will be great to watch and will probably be fun too. The detailed story will probably be excellent too, allowing quests that pull you into the Star Wars mythos and go way beyond kill x or fedex. It's also cool how your quest decisions will impact your character development in a real way. At the same time, it looks to me like it will ultimately be a fairly ordinary game that doesn't vary from the WoW formula in its fundamental aspects. Here are what I see as the dullest aspects of the game: --No sense of a wideopen sandbox world. In changing it up from SWG, they look to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The best part of SWG was that you could go anywhere. Like old games like the old AC, high level creatures wouldn't be far from weak ones, giving a sense of danger and unpredictability. From what I've read, SWTOR will use the old level-based zones. "You are now in the level 22-24 zone. You are now in the 25-27 zone. You are now in the level 28-30 zone." Yawn. Level based zones are the single worst influence of WoW, in both removing a sense of danger and unpredictability and actually making the world seem smaller than it is. --No sense of a wideopen sandbox in character creation/skill development. I get a sense that character types are not going to allow a huge range of possibilities. Granted, each class will have two sub-classes based on game decisions, but other than that the archtypes will probably be quite similar. It looks to be based on choosing powers rather than a skill-based system. --Crafting has been de-emphasized in everything I've read, leading one to believe that there will be a simplistic system. In short, many of the design elements look they are heading towards a restricted type of play, restricted in terms of who can go where when, restricted in terms of character design choices, restricted in terms of crafting, etc. If you don't believe me, consider the PC Gamer editorial which hints at this, or the mmorpg.com predictions for 2010 that some people will be upset with the lack of sandbox features in the game. My complaint is this: Why can't a good game have both? Why can't a game have a great Star Wars theme, great production values and combat, great story elements, AND have the sandbox/freeform elements that a lot of adult gamers really enjoy? And there's NO reason why a game like this shouldn't have an intricate trade skill/crafting system - those who aren't interested in that stuff and just want to swing a lightsaber don't have to use it - putting that in won't negatively affect their experience at all. Why does it have to be either/or? Some games might not have the money for everything, but lord knows this is one game that has the budget to do everything well. It's disappointing that a game that has a lot of smart people and a lot of money behind it looks like they might be going lowest common denominator in many respects.
I keep seeing this kind of post from the sand box crowd Why can't the world be open where i can do whatever i want? In this case this is Bioware A first class game developer. If you had played any of their games you would know right off this is not going to be a sandbox friendly game. I can tell everyone in the eve sand box loving mmo can't stand WOW theme park games crowd you will hate this game. For one thing there will be zoning from world to world ship to ship and so on. Might have zoning within a world as well. Then there is the dialog which will break up the gaming experience so far as going and doing your own thing goes anyway.
I have played Mass Effect, TOR, and Dragon Age and I will tell everyone right now this game will follow the same pattern as in Bioware tells a story and you get to make moral choices you do not get to tell your story. I for one love this kind of thing and really do not like the EVE open world model. One real concern I have is how when a group you get 5 people to make a decision that could affect the future gameplay of all those 5 players? Also are people going to want to wait while everyone take time to figure out what they want to do? I figure everyone will have to wait out the dialog anyway sense it's auto and not text. Which brings up another issue for the Sand box crowd the stop and start of game play waiting for the auto dialog to finish which you will have to let finish so you will know which choice you want to make. I do not mean to imply that Sand Box game are bad not at all it's my guess that SWTOR will be about as far from a sand box game as it is possible to get.
So in closing I would suggest anyone interested in SWTOR take the time to play Mass Effect or Dragon Age it should give you a good idea what the game will be like more or less.
I don't foresee Bioware making the worlds too confined. There should be enough there for the explorer purists.
I see the opposite. Both Kotors, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are all played out in confined worlds. That doesn't make them bad games by any means just slightly frustrating since playability is so good you wish there was more of it spread out over larger areas.
It's a matter of expectations. BioWare is stepping into the MMO world, I would hope they realize every paying customer feels they're the ultimate critic and their opinions matter. I'm not going to say BioWare will give us a rather open world, I just think they're smart enough to.
Now were getting the "this is how it's going to be, if you don't like it play something else" responses I expected. To whomever told me to go play EVE, I don't have any particular interest. Same with SWG, to a great extent. Those games represent the other end of the spectrum in my view, offering some great sandbox features but failing in terms of things like, story, fun, friendly combat, etc.
Call me a dreamer or a whiner, but why can't a game have both? Why do game have to be dull theme parks or high difficulty, unfriendly games like EVE or Fallen Earth (no offense to fans of those titles - I'm just using them as examples of games that seem to have the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses as it looks like SWTOR might have).
Having huge, wide-open worlds and an intricate crafting system might actually be among the easier things to implement on a monster budget game like this. I keep emphasizing budget, because cost restraints are a real-life reason that games have to be scaled back and not be all things to all people. But in a game like this, where the budget is big and the publisher clearly wants to capture both hard core gamers and casual players, there's a legitimate opportunity to do it all well .
I completely agree with you that much of SWG's open world was fairly empty. Given the size of the design team in SWTOR, there should be no reason for an empty world. As I emphasized in my original post, I believe that the source of a dull world in games like WoW isn't the lack of an innovative design team, it's level-based zoning which necessarily keeps areas small and removes any sense of danger. I'd love to see combat system that doesn't make level the key determinant, but I'm not holding my breath. As for crafting, no one thinks the crafting system should be the dominant part of SWTOR. There's just no reason not to have an interesting system in place, given the budget for this game.
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
Now were getting the "this is how it's going to be, if you don't like it play something else" responses I expected. To whomever told me to go play EVE, I don't have any particular interest. Same with SWG, to a great extent. Those games represent the other end of the spectrum in my view, offering some great sandbox features but failing in terms of things like, story, fun, friendly combat, etc. Call me a dreamer or a whiner, but why can't a game have both? Why do game have to be dull theme parks or high difficulty, unfriendly games like EVE or Fallen Earth (no offense to fans of those titles - I'm just using them as examples of games that seem to have the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses as it looks like SWTOR might have). Having huge, wide-open worlds and an intricate crafting system might actually be among the easier things to implement on a monster budget game like this. I keep emphasizing budget, because cost restraints are a real-life reason that games have to be scaled back and not be all things to all people. But in a game like this, where the budget is big and the publisher clearly wants to capture both hard core gamers and casual players, there's a legitimate opportunity to do it all well .
I agree with you. My ideal SWG game would be 'an open world' but with 'themepark islands' all over it. However, it's obvious that Bioware isn't going that way at all. Instead, it seems to me, they are creating a game that may be content rich but which is played out on a very limited landscape. From what we have seen son far, It seems to me to suggest that, despite Bioware Devs claims to the opposite, what we will get is a SPG with some MMORPG features and not a MMO at all. It may be extremely succcesful for what it is - however, it will certainly not be SWG 2. That will have to be made by another company, if it ever is.
I completely agree with you that much of SWG's open world was fairly empty. Given the size of the design team in SWTOR, there should be no reason for an empty world. As I emphasized in my original post, I believe that the source of a dull world in games like WoW isn't the lack of an innovative design team, it's level-based zoning which necessarily keeps areas small and removes any sense of danger. I'd love to see combat system that doesn't make level the key determinant, but I'm not holding my breath. As for crafting, no one thinks the crafting system should be the dominant part of SWTOR. There's just no reason not to have an interesting system in place, given the budget for this game.
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
The "eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities" was, in thge eyes of many palyers, precisely what made the planets really appear populated and functional. The landscapes that are filled with 'dev-supplied content' are incredibly artificial with their static spawns, their invisible barriers and their linear paths.
can you stop assuming things that don´t make any sense, i mean ofcourse you can say your dissapointed or delighted with the footage they released, but don´t say `this game will suck cos its themepark´, have you played it yet? do you know how bioware will make the game work? you people just fill in things how you WANT THEM TO BE...
The "eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities" was, in thge eyes of many palyers, precisely what made the planets really appear populated and functional. The landscapes that are filled with 'dev-supplied content' are incredibly artificial with their static spawns, their invisible barriers and their linear paths.
Exactly it made them "appear", but appearance isn't everything. That was galaxies thing, players made the world. But that's not always a good thing. And this is not the case with SWTOR. In my opinion dev-supplied content is the way to go, this is a preference of mine, I'm really not interested in seeing other players awful looking cities or run of the mill quests. I prefer quality, and this is something most players are not capable of. BioWare is not making ToR with the SWG players constantly on their minds, I believe we will all get our piece of paradise in ToR. Some SWG Vets need to come to understand this or return to galaxies. I would recommend the former, I would rather rip my money to shreds before giving SoE another dime.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
A rather mature way of looking at it. I agree, Bioware can get the experience it needs (tho it has hired experienced devs) to get in the MMO market.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
I agree and disagree.
In my opinion Mass Effect was far better then KOTOR, however I would prefer a KOTOR MMO over a ME mmo. ME2 might change that, either way, I would really like to see some more sci-fi space oriented MMOs. Pure Fantasy is getting old.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
Yeah and Divinity 2 Ego Draconis is better than both of the above games,lol
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
Yeah and Divinity 2 Ego Draconis is better than both of the above games,lol
I guess that depends on if you're more a fantasy fan or a Sci-fi fan. I can't think of a game I had more fun in than KOTOR to be honest especially considering when the game came out, at that time there was nothing really like it on the RPG front in terms of cinematic excellence. Sure there were games with more engaging gameplay and deeper experiences in world lore. I still had more fun with KOTOR followed closely by ESIII-Morrowind. These two games have never been topped by another IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by trophic Originally posted by slimj420 Originally posted by rolandhadley I completely agree with you that much of SWG's open world was fairly empty. Given the size of the design team in SWTOR, there should be no reason for an empty world. As I emphasized in my original post, I believe that the source of a dull world in games like WoW isn't the lack of an innovative design team, it's level-based zoning which necessarily keeps areas small and removes any sense of danger. I'd love to see combat system that doesn't make level the key determinant, but I'm not holding my breath. As for crafting, no one thinks the crafting system should be the dominant part of SWTOR. There's just no reason not to have an interesting system in place, given the budget for this game.
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
The "eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities" was, in thge eyes of many palyers, precisely what made the planets really appear populated and functional. The landscapes that are filled with 'dev-supplied content' are incredibly artificial with their static spawns, their invisible barriers and their linear paths.
Personally I thought letting players plop down structures everywhere in the galaxy made it look incredibly trashy and killed the immersion. Bad enough over half the structures in the game were abandoned; so, there were nothing but ghost towns everywhere you went. Sandboxes seem fun on paper; but, they don't play out well over time due to the fact that people love to do things in excess. You can't expect everyone in a game to work together like a hive of bees. It just doesn't work out in the long run and people leave those games in droves due the the lack of action and content. These types of games are suppose to be RPGs, not simulators. The idea of an RPG is that you have linear goals and path ways. Even though you may have a lot of choices at hand, you still are being funneled toward the same end regardless of your choices.
Most of the MMORPGers these days have no grasp on what a role playing game even is.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
The idea of an RPG is that you have linear goals and path ways. Even though you may have a lot of choices at hand, you still are being funneled toward the same end regardless of your choices. Most of the MMORPGers these days have no grasp on what a role playing game even is.
So, you don't think that Morrowind was a role playing game?
The idea of an RPG is that you have linear goals and path ways. Even though you may have a lot of choices at hand, you still are being funneled toward the same end regardless of your choices. Most of the MMORPGers these days have no grasp on what a role playing game even is.
So, you don't think that Morrowind was a role playing game?
Good point.
It's quite funny that the latest incarnations of old-time SRPG games are becoming richer, more varied and definitely non-linear - just look at Oblivion and Fallout 3. Meanwhile, MMORPG which used to be sophisticated and open-ended, like UO and old-style SWG, are now becomingh limited and linear.
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It would be a game that many won't be playing. A huge portion of the MMO community plays these games because they are large explorable virtual worlds. They must have exploration in mind if the want to, actually, maintain customer subscriptions. If it ends up being nothing more than a glorified linear experience then after one play-through you'll see the customer base dwindle away. I can't imagine this would be something they would overlook.
When the first footage was released, months ago, many people were impressed by the graphics anjd receptive to the 'cartoony style' in which the game was cast. That said, almost everyone complained that about the size of the lightsabers which looked like the toons were holding giant 'liter o' cola' bottles and the strange, almost insectoid shape of the toons themselves with their tiny wiasts and huge thoraxes. The designers said, as designers always say, they they had heard the feedback and would react to it but, from what I have seen in the 'Designing The Dark Side' footage the lightsaber handles are still the same size and the toons are still the same shape. Is that right - or do you think chyanges have been made?
to the challenge thing i say no mmo has ever been really challenging. you either feel weak or powerful. i like how swtor looks in teh videos like your going to be powerful vs mobs. in teh movies there were few enemies that were a challenge to the main characters. and in recent mmos that have made the PC weaker compared to mobs combat has been boring and long instead of fun and rewarding.
i don't mind if swtor is a bit linear as long as there are multiple paths or playing through a different class as an alt is somewhat different and still fun.
swg had alot of problems in how it set up it's large worlds. they were boring and nonsensical for one. most people stayed on tattooine and the other worlds were deserted for two.
the class balance in swg was horrible melee toons which were major IP breakers (for me at least) were super strong and could do things that took dozens of ranged players to do. sure jedis should've been really strong and were, but a martial artist in the star wars universe? that kill anything in seconds with his bare hands when it take 20 guy with blasters minutes to do the same thing?
hopefully all classes in swtor will be equally powerful. the only time i should feel weak is in pvp against a stronger player or when fighting a boss that takes 5 to 25 players to take on.
if luke skywalker could do it, or han solo could do it, so should i be able to. these characters didn't have super powers. luke wasn't asuper jedi. if swtor does this it will succeeed where swg failed in my eyes. in swg storm troopers that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the movies were super accurate one hit kills you unless you were a certain build.
KERPLAH!
I don't foresee Bioware making the worlds too confined. There should be enough there for the explorer purists.
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I see the opposite. Both Kotors, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are all played out in confined worlds. That doesn't make them bad games by any means just slightly frustrating since playability is so good you wish there was more of it spread out over larger areas.
SW:TOR IS NOT SWG. It is not meant to be a second attempt at a sandbox Star Wars. What it is supposed to be is a highly polished Bioware MMO. Nothing new, other than Bioware's excellence in storytelling, fully voiced NPC's, and totally unique quests for each class. If this is not what you want, don't play it.
I keep seeing this kind of post from the sand box crowd Why can't the world be open where i can do whatever i want? In this case this is Bioware A first class game developer. If you had played any of their games you would know right off this is not going to be a sandbox friendly game. I can tell everyone in the eve sand box loving mmo can't stand WOW theme park games crowd you will hate this game. For one thing there will be zoning from world to world ship to ship and so on. Might have zoning within a world as well. Then there is the dialog which will break up the gaming experience so far as going and doing your own thing goes anyway.
I have played Mass Effect, TOR, and Dragon Age and I will tell everyone right now this game will follow the same pattern as in Bioware tells a story and you get to make moral choices you do not get to tell your story. I for one love this kind of thing and really do not like the EVE open world model. One real concern I have is how when a group you get 5 people to make a decision that could affect the future gameplay of all those 5 players? Also are people going to want to wait while everyone take time to figure out what they want to do? I figure everyone will have to wait out the dialog anyway sense it's auto and not text. Which brings up another issue for the Sand box crowd the stop and start of game play waiting for the auto dialog to finish which you will have to let finish so you will know which choice you want to make. I do not mean to imply that Sand Box game are bad not at all it's my guess that SWTOR will be about as far from a sand box game as it is possible to get.
So in closing I would suggest anyone interested in SWTOR take the time to play Mass Effect or Dragon Age it should give you a good idea what the game will be like more or less.
I see the opposite. Both Kotors, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are all played out in confined worlds. That doesn't make them bad games by any means just slightly frustrating since playability is so good you wish there was more of it spread out over larger areas.
It's a matter of expectations. BioWare is stepping into the MMO world, I would hope they realize every paying customer feels they're the ultimate critic and their opinions matter. I'm not going to say BioWare will give us a rather open world, I just think they're smart enough to.
Now were getting the "this is how it's going to be, if you don't like it play something else" responses I expected. To whomever told me to go play EVE, I don't have any particular interest. Same with SWG, to a great extent. Those games represent the other end of the spectrum in my view, offering some great sandbox features but failing in terms of things like, story, fun, friendly combat, etc.
Call me a dreamer or a whiner, but why can't a game have both? Why do game have to be dull theme parks or high difficulty, unfriendly games like EVE or Fallen Earth (no offense to fans of those titles - I'm just using them as examples of games that seem to have the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses as it looks like SWTOR might have).
Having huge, wide-open worlds and an intricate crafting system might actually be among the easier things to implement on a monster budget game like this. I keep emphasizing budget, because cost restraints are a real-life reason that games have to be scaled back and not be all things to all people. But in a game like this, where the budget is big and the publisher clearly wants to capture both hard core gamers and casual players, there's a legitimate opportunity to do it all well .
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
I agree with you. My ideal SWG game would be 'an open world' but with 'themepark islands' all over it. However, it's obvious that Bioware isn't going that way at all. Instead, it seems to me, they are creating a game that may be content rich but which is played out on a very limited landscape. From what we have seen son far, It seems to me to suggest that, despite Bioware Devs claims to the opposite, what we will get is a SPG with some MMORPG features and not a MMO at all. It may be extremely succcesful for what it is - however, it will certainly not be SWG 2. That will have to be made by another company, if it ever is.
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
The "eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities" was, in thge eyes of many palyers, precisely what made the planets really appear populated and functional. The landscapes that are filled with 'dev-supplied content' are incredibly artificial with their static spawns, their invisible barriers and their linear paths.
can you stop assuming things that don´t make any sense, i mean ofcourse you can say your dissapointed or delighted with the footage they released, but don´t say `this game will suck cos its themepark´, have you played it yet? do you know how bioware will make the game work? you people just fill in things how you WANT THEM TO BE...
my god
Exactly it made them "appear", but appearance isn't everything. That was galaxies thing, players made the world. But that's not always a good thing. And this is not the case with SWTOR. In my opinion dev-supplied content is the way to go, this is a preference of mine, I'm really not interested in seeing other players awful looking cities or run of the mill quests. I prefer quality, and this is something most players are not capable of. BioWare is not making ToR with the SWG players constantly on their minds, I believe we will all get our piece of paradise in ToR. Some SWG Vets need to come to understand this or return to galaxies. I would recommend the former, I would rather rip my money to shreds before giving SoE another dime.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
A rather mature way of looking at it. I agree, Bioware can get the experience it needs (tho it has hired experienced devs) to get in the MMO market.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
I agree and disagree.
In my opinion Mass Effect was far better then KOTOR, however I would prefer a KOTOR MMO over a ME mmo. ME2 might change that, either way, I would really like to see some more sci-fi space oriented MMOs. Pure Fantasy is getting old.
We lost Greed....
I noticed. How? Why?
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
Yeah and Divinity 2 Ego Draconis is better than both of the above games,lol
Something like that. I'm just glad Bioware Devs are going to cut their teeth on this Star Wars thing, learn all the hard MMO design lessons from it and then hopefully make a much better MMO out of their own Mass Effect IP. I'm ready to pre-order!
I'd rather they stick with TOR seeing as KOTOR is a trillion times better than Mass effect.
Yeah and Divinity 2 Ego Draconis is better than both of the above games,lol
I guess that depends on if you're more a fantasy fan or a Sci-fi fan. I can't think of a game I had more fun in than KOTOR to be honest especially considering when the game came out, at that time there was nothing really like it on the RPG front in terms of cinematic excellence. Sure there were games with more engaging gameplay and deeper experiences in world lore. I still had more fun with KOTOR followed closely by ESIII-Morrowind. These two games have never been topped by another IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
most of that empty land was taken up by the eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities. they needed a lot of space for thousands of customers to plop down their pixel houses. TOR won't have that thank god. so they can make the landscapes not only smaller, but filled to the brim with content and other stuff that will actually make the game worth playing.
The "eye sore player cities, mining extractors, and the urban sprawl comming out of the npc cities" was, in thge eyes of many palyers, precisely what made the planets really appear populated and functional. The landscapes that are filled with 'dev-supplied content' are incredibly artificial with their static spawns, their invisible barriers and their linear paths.
Personally I thought letting players plop down structures everywhere in the galaxy made it look incredibly trashy and killed the immersion. Bad enough over half the structures in the game were abandoned; so, there were nothing but ghost towns everywhere you went. Sandboxes seem fun on paper; but, they don't play out well over time due to the fact that people love to do things in excess. You can't expect everyone in a game to work together like a hive of bees. It just doesn't work out in the long run and people leave those games in droves due the the lack of action and content. These types of games are suppose to be RPGs, not simulators. The idea of an RPG is that you have linear goals and path ways. Even though you may have a lot of choices at hand, you still are being funneled toward the same end regardless of your choices.
Most of the MMORPGers these days have no grasp on what a role playing game even is.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
So, you don't think that Morrowind was a role playing game?
So, you don't think that Morrowind was a role playing game?
Good point.
It's quite funny that the latest incarnations of old-time SRPG games are becoming richer, more varied and definitely non-linear - just look at Oblivion and Fallout 3. Meanwhile, MMORPG which used to be sophisticated and open-ended, like UO and old-style SWG, are now becomingh limited and linear.