Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
They do. And there are variations on that story based on the background elements you picked while leveling. He sold GW2 short in some ways. That being said, I think SWTOR's class stories still win though. Especially these days, now that they've streamlined them to make it possible to do them without a gazillion filler content (for xp) interrupting the flow.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
That's only true during the early levels. Once you get further along, you start getting into organizational and alliance-level things.
Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
That's only true during the early levels. Once you get further along, you start getting into organizational and alliance-level things.
All of them end around level 40 then? I recall finishing my personal story around that time, and then losing interest in the game >.>
So I wasn't sure if it picks up again while leveling to 80, or not.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
That's only true during the early levels. Once you get further along, you start getting into organizational and alliance-level things.
All of them end around level 40 then? I recall finishing my personal story around that time, and then losing interest in the game >.>
So I wasn't sure if it picks up again while leveling to 80, or not.
I've pretty much ignored the personal story in GW2. Currently level 55, I think I've done one leg of the quests.
GW2's world feels alive enough and deep enough to progress without the need for the personal instances imo.
However, I have to agree that SWTOR presents a better story driven experience. I prefer games that are lore driven, per the comparison @Gorwe made earlier in the thread.
Gw2 is great with story. And they adding so much story quest.
You can like it, sure, but do be aware that entire GW2 story equals to like 1 Class' story in SWTOR. They are not even in the same league! But then again, I'd argue that GW2's the more fun / lasting of the two.
wait what? I thought each race had its own story in GW2. That's what I remember
That's only true during the early levels. Once you get further along, you start getting into organizational and alliance-level things.
All of them end around level 40 then? I recall finishing my personal story around that time, and then losing interest in the game >.>
So I wasn't sure if it picks up again while leveling to 80, or not.
I've pretty much ignored the personal story in GW2. Currently level 55, I think I've done one leg of the quests.
GW2's world feels alive enough and deep enough to progress without the need for the personal instances imo.
However, I have to agree that SWTOR presents a better story driven experience. I prefer games that are lore driven, per the comparison @Gorwe made earlier in the thread.
I did to , got o lvl 30(fixed) , went into WvW and never left ..........till i quit that is
However, I have to agree that SWTOR presents a better story driven experience.
It's been years since I last played but the Sith Inquisitor class story line still stands out in my mind as one of the best MMO stories ever.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
SWTOR was one of the only games where I completed all the character stories. I wanted to see what happened in all them. While I liked them all, some were clearly better than others. GW2 has a decent story attached to it. I also love/loved the story in TSW/TSWL, I think its one of the best and most unique stories in a mmo ever.
I jusr returned to SWTOR and rapidly left , now altho at luanch i really enjoyed the GUnslinger story and trip to max lvl and the content at launch
I returned to lvl a Trooper ,and honestly could not stomach how easy the game has become now , they just thro experience at you that you can barely stay at lvl with the story to make any of the encounters challenging , And that was only doing the Story line from lvl 25 on .. Just was not fun ..
SWTOR was one of the only games where I completed all the character stories. I wanted to see what happened in all them. While I liked them all, some were clearly better than others. GW2 has a decent story attached to it. I also love/loved the story in TSW/TSWL, I think its one of the best and most unique stories in a mmo ever.
Those 3 games are interesting examples since they all uuse rather different approach to it then the Wow/EQ model.
TOR is basically KOTOR with multiplayer, while it certainly is a MMO it is built as much as a singleplayer game which give a different experience.
GW2s approach is that story is optional, you can skip it all besides the tutorial and the quest that gets you into HoT.
TSW is questdriven but with few more epic quests unlike the EQ/Wow model with a full questlog, it is a different way to tell a story from other MMOs and feel closer to pen and paper RPGs to me.
So they are games that stand out in their approach to story and quest in their own way.
I jusr returned to SWTOR and rapidly left , now altho at luanch i really enjoyed the GUnslinger story and trip to max lvl and the content at launch
I returned to lvl a Trooper ,and honestly could not stomach how easy the game has become now , they just thro experience at you that you can barely stay at lvl with the story to make any of the encounters challenging , And that was only doing the Story line from lvl 25 on .. Just was not fun ..
Yeah, it is fast. But I don't mind that. If they could only modify the relative power of mobs, it'd be perfect. I am more interested in the ability to replay the story(NG+ if you will ; I don't care about leveling at all). No reason why it's not implemented yet.
I would keep playing and enjoy it , if they could offer a challenging experience , as it is i was skipping all the great planet content , because it was making it even worse ... No fun 1 shotting everything just doing the story line
I jusr returned to SWTOR and rapidly left , now altho at luanch i really enjoyed the GUnslinger story and trip to max lvl and the content at launch
I returned to lvl a Trooper ,and honestly could not stomach how easy the game has become now , they just thro experience at you that you can barely stay at lvl with the story to make any of the encounters challenging , And that was only doing the Story line from lvl 25 on .. Just was not fun ..
Yeah, it is fast. But I don't mind that. If they could only modify the relative power of mobs, it'd be perfect. I am more interested in the ability to replay the story(NG+ if you will ; I don't care about leveling at all). No reason why it's not implemented yet.
I would keep playing and enjoy it , if they could offer a challenging experience , as it is i was skipping all the great planet content , because it was making it even worse ... No fun 1 shotting everything just doing the story line
Sadly SWTOR's challenge level has been nerfed so much that a blind, deaf, comatose patient could solo his way through the solo content these days.
It was never "omg difficult", but there at least used to be SOME challenging boss fights in the class stories... now you can just afk through the fights and come back after your companion's finished soloing everything.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
TSW is questdriven but with few more epic quests unlike the EQ/Wow model with a full questlog, it is a different way to tell a story from other MMOs and feel closer to pen and paper RPGs to me.
Agree on the second part, the narrative structure is awesome. That's why I used to put them (with LotRO) on the shared first place, I love LotR more and Turbine's writing team did a great job with the lore, but Ragnar's style, his affection towards details, and the way TSW handles the events makes it on par with LotRO.
Quest-driven, however... It's more like a mixed bag between quests and lore. And that's why it falls apart in Legends, you can't slice up a fine-woven tapestry with scissors, glue it together and hope it will be the same Sure, on the base level (cutscenes) it might even work, and let's face it, the "yay, finally levels and action combat, and gear scores with gear grind" people don't look anything beyond that anyways
But cutscenes tell only half of the story, maybe 60%, and not even always tell the truth. And the reports at the end are usually biased towards your faction (that's why it was advised for lore addicts to play through the game with all three factions. Not anymore in Legends, FC removed everything faction-related as a design choice, they said faction pick will be only cosmetic in Legends)
World design, mobs (appearance and behaviour), item placement, etc. gave a new layer and was part of the storytelling - this part was butchered the most in Legends, relocating stuff in the name of "smoothen the gameplay for the action crowd"
Collecting all the lores added a new layer on top of everything, occasionally giving a total opposite reading of the same events.
And then going outside of the game (since the lore is basically the world around us) you could find even more addition in form of the websites FC made for the game, the tweets and other soc.media entries of notable NPCs, etc.
Not to mention all the stuff which FC didn't make, just used... and which can add an awesome topping onto the cake. Like when Kaidan arrived, if you dug up the most popular of those stories (which kaidan means) you understood much better the mobs and the rare bosses in Kaidan, just as the lore. Or when Christmas Conspiracy was added (2014 winter event), if you watched / listened the Magic Flute or red some Mozart biographies, you got an extra layer of experience/fun while playing through the event...
And the best part, since everything in TSW was planned to the smallest details, after you've learned all the above, you could find some hints and tells in the lore without answers. The discussions and ideas about those hints fueled the lore section of the forum for years
Every once in awhile I get an inkling to play SWTOR. Then I remember they removed skill trees and I go play something else.
They completely removed that or have they been just WoWed?
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Every once in awhile I get an inkling to play SWTOR. Then I remember they removed skill trees and I go play something else.
They completely removed that or have they been just WoWed?
They've been WoWed.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
I'm a big fan of stories in general and I read extensively, along with following the usual TV shows and movies for their stories. But I've yet to play a game that does it right, there have been perhaps 2 games where I actually enjoyed the story (FF7 and Deus Ex: HR), in all others it gets in the way.
The biggest issue is balancing the story with the gameplay. It just never works. In the majority of RPGs, you are the hero and the story reflects that. Yet, my actions are my own in game and I very rarely act like a hero. In fact, I'm usually a homicidal maniac and I kill everything I can kill and steal everything I can steal. My ingame actions almost never match with what the story is suggesting, completely breaking immersion and making the story pointless.
The second issue is the stories themselves. They suck! The core framework of the stories tend to be OK (bad guy does something, you have to sort it out) but the details and the presentation are usually awful. If you're lucky, the "main" storyline may have been written better, but a story driven game is full of tons of shit stories too. The actual stories are poor, the presentation is worse and the actions required often don't fit with the story.
Third, how do you match stories with multiplayer? This is actually possible to do simply by changing the focus of the stories. Instead of us being the heroes, as we would in single player games, we simply become helpers. We can still interact with big events and help out, but at least this way the story and actions fit within a multiplayer world. Yet, this hardly ever happens - we remain the heroes, along with everyone else on the server, killing the immersion further.
Finally, in a story driven game, the playerbase inevitably becomes almost entirely dependant on developer produced content. We become so used to being given quests which direct our gameplay that when the quests and the story run out, we don't know what to do. Often, there is nothing left to do. So, we quit. That is absolutely not what we want in an MMO (or any game imo).
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
The problem with SWTOR is... that it has become painfully clear that these decisions aren't coming from developers, who tend to be gamers themselves... they are coming from the suits, who only care about buzzwords like "accessibility", since it means money.
They are forcing the devs to make the game "accessible" to everyone. Ranging from the smallest child, that just randomly mashes buttons, to players who are completely lacking basic motor skills due to some disability. Because they want EVERYONE's money, and they can't fathom it in turn kills the game for actual gamers, because they can't think like that audience.
Most of these people probably never even touch a video game beyond maybe the occasional sports game with their kids. They don't care about good gameplay, they only care about the bottomline. Don't get me wrong, the accessibility thing isn't completely a bad thing. I fully sympathize with people with disabilities - but what they should have done is implement some kind of difficulty setting to help cater to all audiences.
An MMO from 2004 (City of Heroes) was capable of doing this, and somehow today's "modern" MMO devs can't manage this? C'mon. They simply don't want to, since it means added development costs. And heaven forbid they actually invest into their games, rather than ensure the shareholders get another expensive car.
Unless some miracle happens, I don't see myself ever returning to SWTOR. The customer service was atrocious. All the new content completely lacks replayability. And the gameplay has gotten beyond boring. What a sad fate for what was once such a promising game.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Unless some miracle happens, I don't see myself ever returning to SWTOR. The customer service was atrocious. All the new content completely lacks replayability. And the gameplay has gotten beyond boring. What a sad fate for what was once such a promising game.
Was it really ever that promising though?
I mean, pre-beta it seemed promising, they were saying all the right things, had the budget, had the team and had the IP. But once beta hit and even more so when the game launched, it was clear it was no longer promising.
Even at launch, the game was trivial. The combat mechanics and class design resulted in very shallow combat - virtually no inter-class dependency, very few emergency cooldowns, trivial resource management, plus your own personal healer following you around... The storylines, outside of the class stories, were terribly written and the dialogue choices very quickly proved pointless beyond alignment. Even the class stories were pretty crap - the consular line was boring (my main), the trooper line was predictable and the knight line was just dull. I did try both smuggler and agent as they were reputedly the best, but by that point I was so bored I couldn't bring myself to grind out all the filler quests, so whilst they seemed better written, I only managed the first 3 or 4 planets on each before giving up.
I'm also not certain that the decisions were necessarily being driven by suits. Bioware have always been a story-driven company and their combat has never been particularly great. Even KOTOR and KOTOR2 had shit combat, the dragon age games weren't much better. SW:TOR just continued that trend, I just feel like Bioware (and EA) were expecting a better return on investment on their original design but instead of investing money in making the core gameplay better, they doubled-down on the story and focused entirely on monetising that one niche.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
The problem with SWTOR is... that it has become painfully clear that these decisions aren't coming from developers, who tend to be gamers themselves... they are coming from the suits, who only care about buzzwords like "accessibility", since it means money.
They are forcing the devs to make the game "accessible" to everyone. Ranging from the smallest child, that just randomly mashes buttons, to players who are completely lacking basic motor skills due to some disability. Because they want EVERYONE's money, and they can't fathom it in turn kills the game for actual gamers, because they can't think like that audience.
Most of these people probably never even touch a video game beyond maybe the occasional sports game with their kids. They don't care about good gameplay, they only care about the bottomline. Don't get me wrong, the accessibility thing isn't completely a bad thing. I fully sympathize with people with disabilities - but what they should have done is implement some kind of difficulty setting to help cater to all audiences.
An MMO from 2004 (City of Heroes) was capable of doing this, and somehow today's "modern" MMO devs can't manage this? C'mon. They simply don't want to, since it means added development costs. And heaven forbid they actually invest into their games, rather than ensure the shareholders get another expensive car.
Unless some miracle happens, I don't see myself ever returning to SWTOR. The customer service was atrocious. All the new content completely lacks replayability. And the gameplay has gotten beyond boring. What a sad fate for what was once such a promising game.
The problem with TOR? That problem is shared with almost all MMOs on the market today.
Comments
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
So I wasn't sure if it picks up again while leveling to 80, or not.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
GW2's world feels alive enough and deep enough to progress without the need for the personal instances imo.
However, I have to agree that SWTOR presents a better story driven experience. I prefer games that are lore driven, per the comparison @Gorwe made earlier in the thread.
, went into WvW and never left ..........till i quit that is
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I returned to lvl a Trooper ,and honestly could not stomach how easy the game has become now , they just thro experience at you that you can barely stay at lvl with the story to make any of the encounters challenging , And that was only doing the Story line from lvl 25 on .. Just was not fun ..
TOR is basically KOTOR with multiplayer, while it certainly is a MMO it is built as much as a singleplayer game which give a different experience.
GW2s approach is that story is optional, you can skip it all besides the tutorial and the quest that gets you into HoT.
TSW is questdriven but with few more epic quests unlike the EQ/Wow model with a full questlog, it is a different way to tell a story from other MMOs and feel closer to pen and paper RPGs to me.
So they are games that stand out in their approach to story and quest in their own way.
It was never "omg difficult", but there at least used to be SOME challenging boss fights in the class stories... now you can just afk through the fights and come back after your companion's finished soloing everything.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Quest-driven, however... It's more like a mixed bag between quests and lore. And that's why it falls apart in Legends, you can't slice up a fine-woven tapestry with scissors, glue it together and hope it will be the same
But cutscenes tell only half of the story, maybe 60%, and not even always tell the truth. And the reports at the end are usually biased towards your faction (that's why it was advised for lore addicts to play through the game with all three factions. Not anymore in Legends, FC removed everything faction-related as a design choice, they said faction pick will be only cosmetic in Legends)
World design, mobs (appearance and behaviour), item placement, etc. gave a new layer and was part of the storytelling - this part was butchered the most in Legends, relocating stuff in the name of "smoothen the gameplay for the action crowd"
Collecting all the lores added a new layer on top of everything, occasionally giving a total opposite reading of the same events.
And then going outside of the game (since the lore is basically the world around us) you could find even more addition in form of the websites FC made for the game, the tweets and other soc.media entries of notable NPCs, etc.
Not to mention all the stuff which FC didn't make, just used... and which can add an awesome topping onto the cake. Like when Kaidan arrived, if you dug up the most popular of those stories (which kaidan means) you understood much better the mobs and the rare bosses in Kaidan, just as the lore. Or when Christmas Conspiracy was added (2014 winter event), if you watched / listened the Magic Flute or red some Mozart biographies, you got an extra layer of experience/fun while playing through the event...
And the best part, since everything in TSW was planned to the smallest details, after you've learned all the above, you could find some hints and tells in the lore without answers. The discussions and ideas about those hints fueled the lore section of the forum for years
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I'm a big fan of stories in general and I read extensively, along with following the usual TV shows and movies for their stories. But I've yet to play a game that does it right, there have been perhaps 2 games where I actually enjoyed the story (FF7 and Deus Ex: HR), in all others it gets in the way.
The biggest issue is balancing the story with the gameplay. It just never works. In the majority of RPGs, you are the hero and the story reflects that. Yet, my actions are my own in game and I very rarely act like a hero. In fact, I'm usually a homicidal maniac and I kill everything I can kill and steal everything I can steal. My ingame actions almost never match with what the story is suggesting, completely breaking immersion and making the story pointless.
The second issue is the stories themselves. They suck! The core framework of the stories tend to be OK (bad guy does something, you have to sort it out) but the details and the presentation are usually awful. If you're lucky, the "main" storyline may have been written better, but a story driven game is full of tons of shit stories too. The actual stories are poor, the presentation is worse and the actions required often don't fit with the story.
Third, how do you match stories with multiplayer? This is actually possible to do simply by changing the focus of the stories. Instead of us being the heroes, as we would in single player games, we simply become helpers. We can still interact with big events and help out, but at least this way the story and actions fit within a multiplayer world. Yet, this hardly ever happens - we remain the heroes, along with everyone else on the server, killing the immersion further.
Finally, in a story driven game, the playerbase inevitably becomes almost entirely dependant on developer produced content. We become so used to being given quests which direct our gameplay that when the quests and the story run out, we don't know what to do. Often, there is nothing left to do. So, we quit. That is absolutely not what we want in an MMO (or any game imo).
They are forcing the devs to make the game "accessible" to everyone. Ranging from the smallest child, that just randomly mashes buttons, to players who are completely lacking basic motor skills due to some disability. Because they want EVERYONE's money, and they can't fathom it in turn kills the game for actual gamers, because they can't think like that audience.
Most of these people probably never even touch a video game beyond maybe the occasional sports game with their kids. They don't care about good gameplay, they only care about the bottomline. Don't get me wrong, the accessibility thing isn't completely a bad thing. I fully sympathize with people with disabilities - but what they should have done is implement some kind of difficulty setting to help cater to all audiences.
An MMO from 2004 (City of Heroes) was capable of doing this, and somehow today's "modern" MMO devs can't manage this? C'mon. They simply don't want to, since it means added development costs. And heaven forbid they actually invest into their games, rather than ensure the shareholders get another expensive car.
Unless some miracle happens, I don't see myself ever returning to SWTOR. The customer service was atrocious. All the new content completely lacks replayability. And the gameplay has gotten beyond boring. What a sad fate for what was once such a promising game.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I mean, pre-beta it seemed promising, they were saying all the right things, had the budget, had the team and had the IP. But once beta hit and even more so when the game launched, it was clear it was no longer promising.
Even at launch, the game was trivial. The combat mechanics and class design resulted in very shallow combat - virtually no inter-class dependency, very few emergency cooldowns, trivial resource management, plus your own personal healer following you around... The storylines, outside of the class stories, were terribly written and the dialogue choices very quickly proved pointless beyond alignment. Even the class stories were pretty crap - the consular line was boring (my main), the trooper line was predictable and the knight line was just dull. I did try both smuggler and agent as they were reputedly the best, but by that point I was so bored I couldn't bring myself to grind out all the filler quests, so whilst they seemed better written, I only managed the first 3 or 4 planets on each before giving up.
I'm also not certain that the decisions were necessarily being driven by suits. Bioware have always been a story-driven company and their combat has never been particularly great. Even KOTOR and KOTOR2 had shit combat, the dragon age games weren't much better. SW:TOR just continued that trend, I just feel like Bioware (and EA) were expecting a better return on investment on their original design but instead of investing money in making the core gameplay better, they doubled-down on the story and focused entirely on monetising that one niche.