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Game too single player feeling?
zanfire
Member UncommonPosts: 970
I was wondering how the game plays out, is it more like an instance to instance type game or is there really lots of open world content to go around?
I loved the KotoR games back on xbox and bioware as a whole has been a fav RPG dev (except dragon age 2...that was a letdown) I know they can set up very story and character driven single player games (and so far this gaem has that) but from what ive seen it feels like a 4 player multiplayer version of the normal games...but you pay monthly and there is some more MMO like things tacked on.
So does this really play like most MMOs where there is an open world with people running around doing quests, grinding, exploring ..ect or is this more like a hub to instance type MMO?
After the failure that was FFXIV im left with not much else to play or look forward to. I mainly played FFXI (5-6yrs) and dabbled in EQOA-EQ2 (half a year each) and probably less in some other things like WoW/Rift/Lotro..ect.
Im still all for having instances to go into with friends to do big story parts with (the fully voiced part being a big draw for me) but i dont want to bother with the game if that mainly all it is.
Comments
GeorgZoeller
Joined: May 2010
02.04.2011 , 02:02 PM
For the average planet, I'd say that 85+% of space is located in open, non phased areas.
That's average of course. Origin planets, with their focus on introducing the player to the story and their character, generally have a higher density of phased space, while vast open planets like Hoth or Tatooine have less in relation to their huge size.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5374561#edit5374561
for an idea of planets openess i recommend checking out these vids:
Hoth and tatooine vid from pax east
E3 Tatooine live play through
here is info on planets from the info threrad from the official forum
Planets
When asked about how many planets: Quote: 17 major ones. An indeterminate amount of minor ones. Back to hundreds of planets - Darth Hater
Because this is Sicence Fantasy alot of your wanderings can take you inside buildings, compounds, space ships, space stations and so on. Nowhere is this truer than on the city worlds of Nar Shaddaa and Corellia which, from a map sense, are closer to a dungeon you might find in another MMO, than an open world zone. - Bioware
Quote: Alderaan is 7-8 World of Warcraft Zones in size. - Darth Hater
Quote: We built a world big enough to feel expansive, but still not so large that we couldn’t ensure that all of the content was handcrafted up to a BioWare level of quality - Bioware
You will have reasons to go back to starter world, they are not just there for low levels - Bioware
Quote: What we try to do is be sure that our zones are big enough to feel expansive and big but small enough to feel like when you communicate you are communicating with other people - Darth Hater
Quote: Sean: At the moment I believe you’re allowed to visit some planets, others you can’t visit. - SWTOR-Onlinewelton
Quote James Olhen: Our game is very open. We’ve developed several worlds, and each of those worlds is wide open, huge worlds with many square kilometers and you’re able to explore those worlds any way you want - TenTonHammer
After talking about the smaller starter planet of Hutta: Quote: "It took a little under an hour to roam from one end of Hutta to the next, but that was on pretty much a straight line with only a couple little side ventures."- Darth Hater
Quote: The vast majority of our worlds are public spaces. So basically, when you arrive at Coruscant it is a public space for everyone to be running around in. - AskaJedi
The origin or starter worlds are small compared to the others - Darth Hater
Daniel could not say in Km how large the planets are as they vary, as some are on levels and others are single plains - Darth Hater
Quote from Daniel Erickson: One of the differences with our world design is that our environments are not undulating repeated planes - all hand crafted - Edge
Quote From Daniel Erickson: "One of the real things we wanted to show at GDC this year is that our worlds are huge, actually. They are giant, you can explore. They are massive. You can just wander off one direction and go forever." - Darth Hater
Quote from James Olhen: "Our public areas are one contiguous world", "Not just our cities - 90% of the game, actually, will be areas where you can run into other players" - PC Gamer UK April 2010
hopes this helps
yes, that second video in perticular shows the big map and how they spent a good bit of time on the vehicle rolling around. Looks like il be checking this game out after all.
It's definitely not hub instance but I'm afraid everyone will be playing alone with the help of companions.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Well, its no different from any other MMO in the market. Naturally it is up to you whether you want to solo or play with friends. Once you reach an approriate level, you have to team up for the dungeons (like towards the end of the startin planet) or you can get few more levels in order to be able to solo them with a companion. Worlds are pretty open as well, so you will see lot of other players around. Again, it is up to you whether to team up with them and whether to roll on a PvE or PvP server.
Companions do not replace real players.
Soloing is not different from any other major title in the market.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
one of things ive noticed is how solo the games tend to be. People tend to interact very minimaly so it takes away from that "MMO" feel. After spending so much time on games like EQ and FFXI where being part of the community and doing things in a group is pretty much required to get anywere, its not easy to transition to games like whats out today where most everything can be done by yourself and how most people tend to stick to guild groups only. i think thats going to be my only real problem with this game...or really any game since WoW came out...too much solo and until endgame not much reason to work with others.
The majority of todays mmo players want more solo & small group casual gameplay.
This is the furture of mmos.
1) 100% solo leveling
2) Solo & small group instancing
3) NPC companions to fill spots of players
4) No world pvp (if there is its going to be structured and have a mindless public grouping mechanic)
5) no raiding over ten man groups.
6) No dungeons longer than 45 minutes
7) Easy cross shard grouping for pvp and pve instances
8) Less of a gear focused game and more focus toward achievements, cosmetic/social items& titles
9) old epic quests abandoned for monthly repeatable daily even quests that reward the 1-4 hour a week player for doing nothing...
10) Penalties for anyone willing to put more time into a game and actually group, Higher rewards for random grouping for pvp and pve dungeon dailies.
11) Macro systems that make every class 1 buttton spammmers.
I could go on but u can already see the genre going this way.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I think you're grossly exaggerating, it sounds more to me like bitterness speaking than a valid description of the future of MMO's.
A lot of bitterness on these forums, with a lot of posters that have no love at all for as good as all of the current MMO's
It's the way of current MMO's unless you want to enforce grouping like was the case in older MMO's as EQ.
People favored solo leveling because apparently it's what most people liked while leveling, being able to do stuff without the fuss of a group when they were not in the mood for it. The only thing you can do as game developer is put enough stuff in to make grouping more appealing, like a lower threshold to form groups, make grouping more accessible and less clumsy, add content that can only be done with groups and so on.
But as soon as you start to enforce grouping or people feel like they can't have fun without being in a group even at times when they're not in the mood for a group, then you'll start losing players.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ask once the game is released. Anyone who is answering now is guessing.
Aside from that poster's last two points (that do sound quite bitter), it hink it's actually a pretty accurate description of the general direction in which the genre has been going over the past few years.
Most of they items on that list are observations and not opinions. For example, the point that games are going more and more towards "100% solo leveling" is an observation. For every person that "bitterly" thinks that it's horrible, there are probably a bunch of people that think this is fantastic. Liking it or disliking it doesn't really change the fact that MMOs are going in that direction.
"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
lol wow another hate post ;D i think i pass on this one all i have to say flame the game all you want but when it releases it will be awsome. all i see is hate on game people never played or even tired or give the game a chance . i see post like this all the time what willl happen when guild wars 2 is close to release let me guess another flame post i bet
.....
I don't think so: a number of his predictions are clearly offbase, and some of them have been in MMO's since WoW, so those aren't the future but the past and the present. 100% solo leveling up to level cap and solo/small group instances were already possible in quite a number of MMO's in the past.
Besides that, he completely ignores the line up of upcoming MMO's which show a wide variety in mechanics and gameplay features, a number of which are not on his list at all.
So yes, it sounds like a case of bitterness and desillusion with the MMO genre
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
And how do you know it will be awsome when it releases?
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
I think the industry needs to come up with an entire new coin phrase for games like this one, so no SWTOR ain't the only guilty party, this is for all intents a single player game with some online aspects as it's the furthest thing from an MMORPG as the defacto industry standard of the term.
Once SWTOR starts breaking all kinds of records such as most disappointing mmo of all time (because it ain't the mmorpg people are expecting)
Then breaks the record of most cancellations within a two month period, maybe then we'll start to notice more defining catch phrases then the all encompassing - MMORPG for every game online and possibly more honesty coming from companies like EA. lol
Anyway I've nothing against solo'ing btw, i loved the kotor games but looking into this I'm sitting out and going to watch the show after launch.
Who knows maybe I'll be wrong and it is going to be the greatest thing evar, or as i predicted to my friends an over night hit like Rift, Warhammer online, the list goes on, all it takes is a little unbiased research to tell whats actually going to be good and whats actually hype.
...huh? hate post? i was asking if it was going to be an instanced type game, if anything im intrested in the game. Are you looking for people who hate on the game...grasping at staws much?
Also noone knows if it will be awesome. Me and my friends saw lots on FFXIV and it all seemed awesome, but it turned out awful...so now i dont jump into anything without trying it or getting all the info.
Unbiased..hahahah sorry but i couldn't stop the laughter..hahahahah..lol. Nothing that you have wrote regarding SWTOR has been unbiased so far. But thanks for un intentional funny post.
The real thing about SWTOR that people can view as good or bad, is that it will be somewhat solo for the first few hours on the starter planets. Classes don't start to run together until the home world. The first group quests are on the starter planets, and the first group oriented flashpoint is roughly when you leave the starter world at level 10.
The game opens up a little on the factions home world, but gameplay doesn't really open up as some areas will be somewhat level restricted, so while you get to a certain world, there may be content you can't access yet. When you're slightly above the midpoint of leveling and start reaching other planets like hoth and tatooine, these are really the largest worlds and where you'll likely find the meat of group encounters until you get closer to end game. Thats not to say grouping won't have its place before this, but I think it would be on the largest planets where both factions are around, where theres much more space to explore, that players will see more reasons to group and where people will group to explore.
I do think that the early game will feel single player for a good portion of it. I also think, because the game will attract BioWare players, we'll see a lot of people doing the story content in the early game, and only when the late game comes into play (where story content drops down to only 10 - 30 %) will we start to see players opening up to grouping. Maybe the second time around after a good majority has a feel for group content we'll see it open up.
Thats pretty much how I see it initially. That being said though, I think its not a bad thing seeing as how people usually run through tutorials to level 5 - 10, which is pretty much the starter world, and they do that solo anyways. (though the starter world may take a bit longer for some than the average tutorial). And usually people try and learn their classes before really delving into grouping, which, there class only comes into play after they leave the starter planet, so you really won't come into your class until a little while after like level 15 - 20, thats how I see it anyways.
Just throwing it out there, but i think he means post -WoW like most people do. There have been a bunch of MMOs before it and most have been changed by things on that list. I kind of share a bit of the bitterness seeing as how ive played games like EQ and FFXI first. Some things i like, some solo content is nice, small group stuff is nice, NPC companions can be handy for solo/small group things..ect
But i also dont like other things, or games that take things like Solo content and make it as effective if not more effective then group content (or just more of it then group content).
They already have a coin phrase, it's called 'themepark MMO', where have you been the past 5-6 years?
As for a 'little unbiased research', I really really doubt that you're the measurement of that unless it's a self appointed title. To me, it sounds like you let your disappointment speak for you and those emotions color your viewpoint to the very negative side.
Anyone who is unbiased and does some research, will see that SWTOR is an AAA themepark MMORPG, it couldn't be clearer.
As for digging a little deeper and see how it compares to other themepark MMO's, it has all the features that AAA themepark MMO's have and looks like to be larger in worldsize and amount of themepark based content than most other themepark MMO's. To compare, 1 normal planet already is almost as large as Rift's entire world and there are 13 of them. Besides that, it looks like to come out with a lot more content than most themepark MMO's.
So, there you have it: SWTOR is an AAA themepark MMO, that will probably be one of the largest if not the largest of them all.
Will this be enough? Only time will tell, but if themepark gameplay is your thing, then SWTOR will have enough of that around, a lot more than other themepark MMO's, certainly a hell of a lot more than Rift (not saying anything bad about Rift, just its world is small and its available leveling content fairly sparse).
? I meant post-WoW too.
But that's still like 7 years, that WoW came out, all the developments since 2004 up to now are still in the past.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
sounds like people don't remember how much "fun" it was to have to shout for groups or members every day for an hour (or more) and then run with the group for twenty minutes before the healer went LD.
Or reach a level range where your class was undesirable in groups at the power-leveling area of choice, and not get a group at all.
Forced grouping for leveling your character is lame as Hell.
BUT...having the freedom and the option to group with others to take on content that is far too high level for you and get an appropriate XP bonus for doing so is something I miss.
Being level 100 in Anarchy Online killing 'Borgs (brfore the Heckler grind....goddamn Shadowlands ruined the game) that ranged from lvl 150+ with a group was a BLAST.
You had to be good. One mistake by anyone and you got wiped. It was an optional challenge with awesome rewards in both XP and loot.
Games these days focus too much on level locking their content and gear. I miss twinking (REAL twinking....getting on a weapon 50 levels higher than your characterfor example), and the freedom that older MMORPGs offered.
There were advantages and drawbacks to the old systems....but I think I would rather have the advantages that newer games offer than have to suffer through the drawbacks of the great games of old.
Im really looknig forward to this game for the levelling experience, single player with a bit of grouping looks fun in this game. I will be jumping ship once I hit the end-game however which is dated and done to death.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I also remember those AO days very well. Broken Shores was just a pain in the ass towards the end, but since not that many players got to that point, you knew most that did very well. They were also relatively good players and dedicated. It required a lot of dedication and sweat to get there. However, the grind in AO was never as bad as it was in L2 (which I only played to level 40s or so), but it was still something that you don't see these days. The commitment required simply required too many hours of extremely repetitive content.
In my opinion, hunting groups should still be viable option for levelling. They should be rewarded with high-XP per hour etc. The problem, of course, is that many players still would not participate because groups like that would distract them from the story.
I much prefer current themeparks over gamers like AO and L2. You can still group, but you are not forced to. Also grouping occasionally for a specific group content is rather fun. At least you are not forced to suffer the negatives of grouping with random people all the time, grouping with friends can always be done anyways unless you are a person who prefers optimize everything and socialising is good second or third to the XP and loot. .
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yes it should be up to you .. no an MMO shouldn't be almost solely designed around solo players.
So it's up to me whether I want to easily clear simple mobs or make my life even more droll by grouping with someone and not even be able to cast more than 2 spells 1/2 the time?
"Soloing is not different from any other major title in the market." Is not a valid argument for yet another game making a solo centric game with a chat box and an AH.
Seriously, how hard is it to make some open world area with mini bosses and elites running around? It doesn't even have to be all that awesome looking .. it doesn't even need quests .. just some green drops similar to the quests at that level with a chance at a blue thats 115% better or something. it doesnt even have to be balanced, we'll just take 2 groups if necessary.
There are so many ways to make games more interesting but all we get is more daily quests in most games and 80% all solo content. What the hell happened to MMOs.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
For so long now, the major compaint in this genre has been the repetitive nature of the MMO endgame. This is the alternative you have come up with? This stuff was done away with for a reason, just as Raiding mechanics need to be today. The genre has to move forward, not backward. Those old ways of playing grew just as stale as the "new ways" have, the only difference is, the design above grew stale years ago.
I'm personally done with roaming the country side looking for mobs to kill, for no good reason outside of what they crap out.
To SB fans, please stop making our demographic look bad.Stop invading threads that have nothing to do with sandboxes.
SW:TOR Graphics Evolution and Comparison
SW:TOR Compare MMO Quests, Combat and More...
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Yeah, unfortunately it's either that or roaming the countryside looking for mobs to kill because Bob the NPC told you he needs 10 of them killed and you need the 50xp points and 5 gold that he provides.
Which is the quest/story progression (or "grind" to some). This is the OTHER major complaint about MMOs today. Ask anyone that played RIFT about how "awesome" it was to just follow a single-player storyline for the entire game. I hate grinding mobs, but halfway through the leveling i would have given my firstborn to just do some useful mob killing without having to run between 50 different NPCs.
The "right" approach is to create a world where you existence makes it so it makes sense for you to be out killing whatever you're killing. Whether you're doing it for greed (money), creation (killing X will help you create something) or protection (you must kill X in order to protect what you've created).
Unfortunately, none of the major upcoming games are really structured like this. So it's basically pick your poison - kill stuff for xp and loot, or kill stuff so Bob the NPC will give you xp and loot. There are well-written games like LoTRO (and likely SWTOR) where you are just willing to kill stuff to get to the next dialogue or story piece, but that gets old pretty fast too. Unless what you're doing ties into your existence in the world, it's all going to get old fast.
Games like TR and Rift are onto somethign with the invasion mechanic - if you don't stop the NPCs, they take over key points in the game and interfere with your existence. This is a great motivator to fight mobs - not for xp or money, but because of the nature of the world. This just needs to be expanded into more areas of the MMOs to the point that when you log in, it's not "how do i get xp?" or "how do i get money?" or "ok, part 465 of the story of Jonie The Lonely Shepherd", but instead you log in and it's "what's going on in the world today and how can effect it?".
So yeah, that would be awesome. But we don't have that. What we have are games based around mob killing and questing - games like WoW, SWTOR, EQ2, LoTRO, etc. Best to enjoy them for what they and hope that one day soon things will change.
"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