Nothing to click on, pick up, or interact with. No animals, bugs, fish. No plants to pick, minerals to collect. No ambient sounds. Nothing at all.
Wha?!?!
Must have had the power-gamer "must level faster!" tunnel vision and didn't see the forest for the trees, so to speak.
Plenty of ambience and everything Hatewall mentioned (except the fish) is in there.
Well, I'm a slow casual gamer who focuses on such features (that's what we sandbox players do), and I found it all to be sorely lacking in swtor. It felt stale, lifeless, highly contrived and sterile. I know, I know... we are all deluding ourselves into not liking it.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I only did beta this weekend and was mostly in starter areas. Part of what I am saying is that I assume there is much more than what I saw in the final game. I really hope so.
I am going to buy it and play.
Yeah there are animals (mainly there for scenery), there are gathering nodes you can learn skills to harvest/slice (even on starter worlds) actually from my experience you need to start them early, on the starter worlds; otherwise your skill will be too low to collect later on.
Plenty of ambient sounds as well. Which is why my response was "Wha?!?!?"
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Well, I'm a slow casual gamer who focuses on such features (that's what we sandbox players do), and I found it all to be sorely lacking in swtor. It felt stale, lifeless, highly contrived and sterile. I know, I know... we are all deluding ourselves into not liking it.
I am sorry you felt that way.
I found quite the opposite, but I believe in all honesty that my immersion came from the story and as such allowed me to be immersed in the world and the environments, and as such the linking of story+environments I found very Star Warsy and very immersive.
That being said, I can fully understand that if a person does not become immersed in the story then the world could and probably does feel a little lifeless as the story is really the source of life for this title.
Well, I'm a slow casual gamer who focuses on such features (that's what we sandbox players do), and I found it all to be sorely lacking in swtor. It felt stale, lifeless, highly contrived and sterile. I know, I know... we are all deluding ourselves into not liking it.
If you don't like it, you don't like it...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The life and soul of the game is in the cut scenes. But gameplay does feel stiff and very predictable. For instance, bad guys rooted in groups of three to where they spawned. It seems so artificial. The way npcs spawn in threes and stay in one area reminds me of COH or one of those hero games. And they are placed in the path of your objective so you must fight there and fight back, unless navigating around or following a path where some other player has cleared npcs. And respawn is fast, perhaps because it is beta? or it's starter area? and they are compensating for high player pop?
One of the favorite things about my smuggler was the healing animation. Showed a little attitude, a little bravado which seemed to suit my character. I liked that I could make choices in the dialogue, even though i'm not sure it matters much.
I like chat bubbles. Helps foster socializing. Conversations outside of group or guild will get lost easily in the scrawl, but this game is probably not intended for talking and building community which is too bad because there is a natural community out there for Star Wars and rp.
I will definitely pick up the game though, and atleast play it through for the story. I was thinking to buy it some time after release, but then i remembered my other gaming friends that will be playing will probably not wait, and delaying my purchase will mean they will be far ahead in the story
This has been bothering me since I logged off yesterday. Maybe it's just Corusant and the starter planets (and maybe it improves past them) but the worlds do just feel dead. Just mobs standing in crowds waiting to be mowed down. You'll be lucky if there's a pat, but they are few and far between. The ambient dialogue between NPCs is a nice flair, but it's too few and far between for my liking.
Agree 100% with the OP, and still on the fence about preordering.
There are videos of the "more open maps", such as Tatooine that don't show any more signs of life in my opinion. I think the whole game is just very clean and sterile like that. It just looks and feels like that all over the place.
I think this was all done by design. A lot of people don't really think about what I believe is the single most important reason WoW had such financial success. The game's graphics, especially at launch, were stripped way down so the game could be played on just about anything. Basic textures, very low poly count, low number of items in the game world, etc.
Bioware seems to be trying to mimic this so the game will run on as many computers as possible. The trouble is, they didn't pull it off. The WoW artists, to their credit, did an amazing job at adding depth to their game world, mostly using great low-impact textures and they succeeded with what would have otherwise been one hell of a boring looking game.
Take a close look around at SWTOR. Low poly count (for the most part), flat textures, few moving things, almost no creatures to talk about, etc, etc. It's just dead.
I have to say, I was completely baffled at the placement of those large mobs that just stand there on Ord Mantell. They are just peppered here and there. They don't really move, don't attack, don't do anything. They are the perfect symbol for the whole game world for me.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I only did beta this weekend and was mostly in starter areas. Part of what I am saying is that I assume there is much more than what I saw in the final game. I really hope so.
I am going to buy it and play.
Plenty of ambient sounds as well. Which is why my response was "Wha?!?!?"
The ambient sound thing threw me for a bit, too. Coruscant just has TONS going on; all the speeder traffic, muttering crowds, etc.
Though I do recall that for a while we didn't have footstep sound fx. Maybe that's what they were referring to?
Far as stuff to click on, it is (merely) about the same as other MMO's. You can sit in chairs on your ship, but not yet in the open world; maybe that's in the works? I don't suspect you'll ever see people picking up plates and stuff in public areas like you might have in "UO".
I have to agree with the OP. When I log in, I don't feel like I'm logging in to play a game; I feel like I'm logging in to run missions and level up. I've been playing MMOs for over 10 years, and I've already done the mission grind more times than I care to remember. SWTOR doesn't give me any reason to explore. Not only that, but the planets are so small that exploration is pretty much impossible! I can run across Corriban in 3 minutes and the only things to see are static NPCs or mission objectives. The other planets aren't much better. Even an old game like EQ2 had more to see and do in the first few zones than SWTOR has in the entire game. SWG (the original iteration) had more to do on one planet than in the entirety of SWTOR.
I'd buy SWTOR if it were a single-player game that I could pick up for $19.99. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything particularly new or innovate to the MMO genre. The only reason I didn't immediately put it down was my love of Star Wars, but after 10 hours I don't even want to play it for free anymore.
I am noone to step on toes. I have no references that are high and mighty, I just have experience. I try not to post on this site too much because I try to stay objective and look at it from both sides. In my personal opinion OP is right in most ways, but what OP didn't mention, and perhaps doesn't know that ALL BETA tests are NOT the final product. I call it the Post Beta Pre-launch polish. Most of the tedius and so called 'life' that is random animals running around and interactive NPCs having random conversations with other NPCs is all apart of that "Polish". The last two weekend Beta tests were to test the STRESS of the system with a high volume of gameplay and activities. They were NOT to test people on their ability to cope with insufficiencies. I Beta'd WoW, Rift, and Aion. I have Alpha and Beta test quite a few F2P games. I enjoy doing it, even if it isn't the final product. Each and everyone of those games I tested were Rough around the edges as is ToR. More times than not they hold out their final work for release.
I only did beta this weekend and was mostly in starter areas. Part of what I am saying is that I assume there is much more than what I saw in the final game. I really hope so.
I am going to buy it and play.
Plenty of ambient sounds as well. Which is why my response was "Wha?!?!?"
The ambient sound thing threw me for a bit, too. Coruscant just has TONS going on; all the speeder traffic, muttering crowds, etc.
Though I do recall that for a while we didn't have footstep sound fx. Maybe that's what they were referring to?
Far as stuff to click on, it is (merely) about the same as other MMO's. You can sit in chairs on your ship, but not yet in the open world; maybe that's in the works? I don't suspect you'll ever see people picking up plates and stuff in public areas like you might have in "UO".
I've heard reports people have seen others sitting in chairs in cantinas, I haven't played in a few weeks due to first Skyrim, then my GFX card fried so I don't know, last I played there was no sitting at all aside from on the ground.
At different periods sounds have changed, so maybe when he tried it was a different case..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I agree with you the zones should be more life like, and there should be weather and hopefully day/night too. It's not a gamebreaker, but adds up a lot to atmosphere then again.
I didnt feel at all on the starter zones to explore anything, because there obviously wasnt pretty much anything to explore, even the paths were very "handholding" and narrow style. Almost the same on Coruscant, with the nice difference that I started to notice balconies and such, where when I eventually managed to climb or found some back alley elevator there was either a loot chest or something else. Definately going to look more for these in release when I'm not in a hurry anymore.
Then, after lvl15 I got my ship and went to Taris. The whole game opened ten folds compared to the two first places. There were no canyon paths blocking me, and even if my bunch of quests asked me to go to some certain place, I swayed from the path to look around corners and climb to places, looking for holocrons or chests and sometimes just ending up in a interesting place. I'm not lying here, and I have the feeling that as soon as the worlds begin to open up you can start to breath a bit more freely, after getting a speeder, just go some direction and find something on the very big worlds. It's still a themepark design, but it does open up. It was propably a design choise to open gradually more and bigger the game as the player goes on so it feels great to go to a new world from the last.
I remember reading this negative review a while back, and all the fans were bashing it to death. I thought the guy was abit cynical. With what I know now, it's completely spot on for me:
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Comments
Well, I'm a slow casual gamer who focuses on such features (that's what we sandbox players do), and I found it all to be sorely lacking in swtor. It felt stale, lifeless, highly contrived and sterile. I know, I know... we are all deluding ourselves into not liking it.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Yeah there are animals (mainly there for scenery), there are gathering nodes you can learn skills to harvest/slice (even on starter worlds) actually from my experience you need to start them early, on the starter worlds; otherwise your skill will be too low to collect later on.
Plenty of ambient sounds as well. Which is why my response was "Wha?!?!?"
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I am sorry you felt that way.
I found quite the opposite, but I believe in all honesty that my immersion came from the story and as such allowed me to be immersed in the world and the environments, and as such the linking of story+environments I found very Star Warsy and very immersive.
That being said, I can fully understand that if a person does not become immersed in the story then the world could and probably does feel a little lifeless as the story is really the source of life for this title.
If you don't like it, you don't like it...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The life and soul of the game is in the beautiful cinematics and voiced cutscenes.
But once those end, SWTOR suffers the same fate like every other recent MMO.
It's called static.
The life and soul of the game is in the cut scenes. But gameplay does feel stiff and very predictable. For instance, bad guys rooted in groups of three to where they spawned. It seems so artificial. The way npcs spawn in threes and stay in one area reminds me of COH or one of those hero games. And they are placed in the path of your objective so you must fight there and fight back, unless navigating around or following a path where some other player has cleared npcs. And respawn is fast, perhaps because it is beta? or it's starter area? and they are compensating for high player pop?
One of the favorite things about my smuggler was the healing animation. Showed a little attitude, a little bravado which seemed to suit my character. I liked that I could make choices in the dialogue, even though i'm not sure it matters much.
I like chat bubbles. Helps foster socializing. Conversations outside of group or guild will get lost easily in the scrawl, but this game is probably not intended for talking and building community which is too bad because there is a natural community out there for Star Wars and rp.
I will definitely pick up the game though, and atleast play it through for the story. I was thinking to buy it some time after release, but then i remembered my other gaming friends that will be playing will probably not wait, and delaying my purchase will mean they will be far ahead in the story
Which is where PVP and guild activity come into play...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There are videos of the "more open maps", such as Tatooine that don't show any more signs of life in my opinion. I think the whole game is just very clean and sterile like that. It just looks and feels like that all over the place.
I think this was all done by design. A lot of people don't really think about what I believe is the single most important reason WoW had such financial success. The game's graphics, especially at launch, were stripped way down so the game could be played on just about anything. Basic textures, very low poly count, low number of items in the game world, etc.
Bioware seems to be trying to mimic this so the game will run on as many computers as possible. The trouble is, they didn't pull it off. The WoW artists, to their credit, did an amazing job at adding depth to their game world, mostly using great low-impact textures and they succeeded with what would have otherwise been one hell of a boring looking game.
Take a close look around at SWTOR. Low poly count (for the most part), flat textures, few moving things, almost no creatures to talk about, etc, etc. It's just dead.
I have to say, I was completely baffled at the placement of those large mobs that just stand there on Ord Mantell. They are just peppered here and there. They don't really move, don't attack, don't do anything. They are the perfect symbol for the whole game world for me.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
The ambient sound thing threw me for a bit, too. Coruscant just has TONS going on; all the speeder traffic, muttering crowds, etc.
Though I do recall that for a while we didn't have footstep sound fx. Maybe that's what they were referring to?
Far as stuff to click on, it is (merely) about the same as other MMO's. You can sit in chairs on your ship, but not yet in the open world; maybe that's in the works? I don't suspect you'll ever see people picking up plates and stuff in public areas like you might have in "UO".
I have to agree with the OP. When I log in, I don't feel like I'm logging in to play a game; I feel like I'm logging in to run missions and level up. I've been playing MMOs for over 10 years, and I've already done the mission grind more times than I care to remember. SWTOR doesn't give me any reason to explore. Not only that, but the planets are so small that exploration is pretty much impossible! I can run across Corriban in 3 minutes and the only things to see are static NPCs or mission objectives. The other planets aren't much better. Even an old game like EQ2 had more to see and do in the first few zones than SWTOR has in the entire game. SWG (the original iteration) had more to do on one planet than in the entirety of SWTOR.
I'd buy SWTOR if it were a single-player game that I could pick up for $19.99. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring anything particularly new or innovate to the MMO genre. The only reason I didn't immediately put it down was my love of Star Wars, but after 10 hours I don't even want to play it for free anymore.
Hey guys and gals,
I am noone to step on toes. I have no references that are high and mighty, I just have experience. I try not to post on this site too much because I try to stay objective and look at it from both sides. In my personal opinion OP is right in most ways, but what OP didn't mention, and perhaps doesn't know that ALL BETA tests are NOT the final product. I call it the Post Beta Pre-launch polish. Most of the tedius and so called 'life' that is random animals running around and interactive NPCs having random conversations with other NPCs is all apart of that "Polish". The last two weekend Beta tests were to test the STRESS of the system with a high volume of gameplay and activities. They were NOT to test people on their ability to cope with insufficiencies. I Beta'd WoW, Rift, and Aion. I have Alpha and Beta test quite a few F2P games. I enjoy doing it, even if it isn't the final product. Each and everyone of those games I tested were Rough around the edges as is ToR. More times than not they hold out their final work for release.
Like I said, I am only looking at it objectively.
I've heard reports people have seen others sitting in chairs in cantinas, I haven't played in a few weeks due to first Skyrim, then my GFX card fried so I don't know, last I played there was no sitting at all aside from on the ground.
At different periods sounds have changed, so maybe when he tried it was a different case..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Stay on topic please. And refrain from personally attacking other users.
The cinematics are brilliant. I could watch two hours of that.
yea I could watch those cinematics all day.. wish they put as much effort into the rest of the game as those
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
@OP,
I agree with you the zones should be more life like, and there should be weather and hopefully day/night too. It's not a gamebreaker, but adds up a lot to atmosphere then again.
I didnt feel at all on the starter zones to explore anything, because there obviously wasnt pretty much anything to explore, even the paths were very "handholding" and narrow style. Almost the same on Coruscant, with the nice difference that I started to notice balconies and such, where when I eventually managed to climb or found some back alley elevator there was either a loot chest or something else. Definately going to look more for these in release when I'm not in a hurry anymore.
Then, after lvl15 I got my ship and went to Taris. The whole game opened ten folds compared to the two first places. There were no canyon paths blocking me, and even if my bunch of quests asked me to go to some certain place, I swayed from the path to look around corners and climb to places, looking for holocrons or chests and sometimes just ending up in a interesting place. I'm not lying here, and I have the feeling that as soon as the worlds begin to open up you can start to breath a bit more freely, after getting a speeder, just go some direction and find something on the very big worlds. It's still a themepark design, but it does open up. It was propably a design choise to open gradually more and bigger the game as the player goes on so it feels great to go to a new world from the last.
I remember reading this negative review a while back, and all the fans were bashing it to death. I thought the guy was abit cynical. With what I know now, it's completely spot on for me:
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2011/04/29/star-wars-the-old-republic-preview/1
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.