heres to hoping Anet's dynamic events provide a more action driven delivery of cause and consequence.
Lol I saw this coming a mile away, well played sir.
I know i know cliche forum rubbish. I tip my hat in your kind acknowledgement.
Its difficult to get it across without upsetting either camp, choice has been the buzz word in all gaming to replace the "sandbox" class of the early 2000's post GTA IV.
It would just be great if I made my choice between actually walking up and hacking someones head off in game, in control of my character, with the usual method of hacking off said persons face! rather than having to decide what the outcome will be in color coded text, Die Die (hack off his head) or Tea party at about 8 on parsons green (ask him to join you for a hetrosexual encounter). Also why does the consequence always have to be DEATH OR CAKE, why not be ambiguous, or offer options where the conseuqence seems minor. When you hack said evil person head off he very rarely turns out to be a good person under cover and u bugger it up.
I'm not 100% convinced by guildwars2's method either, as it seems a bit do or die, you either win and progress or lose and withdraw, It would be great to have options that branch outwards rather than tug of wars backwards and forwards.
heres to hoping Anet's dynamic events provide a more action driven delivery of cause and consequence.
Lol I saw this coming a mile away, well played sir.
I know i know cliche forum rubbish. I tip my hat in your kind acknowledgement.
Its difficult to get it across without upsetting either camp, choice has been the buzz word in all gaming to replace the "sandbox" class of the early 2000's post GTA IV.
It would just be great if I made my choice between actually walking up and hacking someones head off in game, in control of my character, with the usual method of hacking off said persons face! rather than having to decide what the outcome will be in color coded text, Die Die (hack off his head) or Tea party at about 8 on parsons green (ask him to join you for a hetrosexual encounter). Also why does the consequence always have to be DEATH OR CAKE, why not be ambiguous, or offer options where the conseuqence seems minor. When you hack said evil person head off he very rarely turns out to be a good person under cover and u bugger it up.
I'm not 100% convinced by guildwars2's method either, as it seems a bit do or die, you either win and progress or lose and withdraw, It would be great to have options that branch outwards rather than tug of wars backwards and forwards.
Probably because the Star Wars movie is not about 'ambiguous' moral choices like The Witcher2 but about Luke vs Vadar and destiny/redemption etc etc.
To the general public Star Wars = Lightsabers and death stars.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
It would be great to have options that branch outwards rather than tug of wars backwards and forwards.
SWTOR will have questing that leaves you 3 options and outcomes, and they're often not as cut and dry or 'pure evil' and 'pure good' as people might think.
Originally posted by Robmmo
Like some said already, it is odd they talk about "200 hours". Knowing Dragon Age, this probably means listening to npc's and watching in game footage for 150 hours and fight/travel 50 hours.
Knowing todays gamers, the "esc" button will be used a lot. OP as much as you are in love with the game, do you wanna bet that 3 to 4 days after launch every server will have capped characters already, screaming "i am bored to tears" after one week ?
X hours of gameplay is simply a term used in single player liniair games. Bioware has no clue about long term mmo play. I hope for them they don't think an online version of a single player leveling is the core of success ... Because it isn't.
Here's a simple question for you: do you like the traditional textbased MMO questing that you see in all current MMO's right now, and do you want that it stays the same? That's the only question that you have to ask yourself.
Because 3 MMO cmopanies are betting that people prefer their quests to not stay the same as they have been in MMO's, 3 MMO companies are implementing VO and cinematic cutscenes to their quests, and SWTOR on top of that choices in multiple paths in the questlines.
Furthermore, the majority of people who experienced it in the demo prefer SWTOR's approach to questing than the current traditional MMO way.
As for the 3 to 4 days having capped characters that are screaming "I am bored to tears", you know how ridiculous that sounds, right? If people get bored, they get bored, happens in all MMO's.
But the number of gameplay hours to reach level cap gives a clue to how long it'll take most of the MMO gamers to be busy with the journey, the leveling and questing. 200 hours is a good indication that it'll cost the vast majority 2 to 3 months to reach level cap.
Besides, if you still think that SWTOR is not an MMORPG you might want to read up on the available info and ask yourself what an (themepark) MMORPG means and what features it has.
As for my OP, I like it when the MMORPG's I play have a huge abundance in content and huge worlds, so far it seems SWTOR both in amount of (questing) content as well as in worldsize will surpass most of the MMORPG's at its launch. Some people don't care how much leveling content or paths there are or how big an ingame world is, I happen to do care about those. The more there is to explore and the more there is to leveling for alts that I haven't already done before, the more it'll add to my enjoyment of a game.
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."
Here is a simple answer to your simple question. Age of Conan uses voice overs with its NPC's for 20 levels with mulitple answers. In fact I played it yesterday, you should try it it too to play and see "reality" in real playable Mmo's. It took me 4 cut scenes before I hit the "esc" button.
Mmo's are not made to talk to NPC's and watching in game videos, These games are meant to be played by people not by NPC's. Do you think WoW would be better if everything was spoken and listened to and viewed in videos ? Nope, far from it, people hated the cut scenes.
Of course a nice audio here and there can enhance it all, but since people read 5 times faster than an audio speech, this has to be restricted to "yes sir" or otherwise you simply hit escape. So 150 hours waisted in costs already.
Well, obviously tastes and preferences differ. The overall majority liked the questing in AoC and they disliked it when that questing changed after Tortage.
In fact, I've seen as good as only complaints that were about how the world in AoC after Tortage felt different and that afterwards it was the 'same old' questing, I've seen as good as none of people that said 'thank god that I'm back to regular questing after Tortage'.
Anyway, for the minority of pople who prefer their questing to be without VO/cinematics, they can get the quest subtitled and skip. However, based on all the reports of people who played it, you're in a minority, most prefer the VO/cinematic way to just skipping quest text. If you hate it that much, you're going to do a lot of skipping in SWTOR, GW2 and TSW.
Those hours might be wasted for you, but a whole lot of people see it as a great investment. I guess there's an MMORPG out there for everyone, luckily enough for you there'll be other MMO's out there who will have the traditional textbased way of quests.
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."
heres to hoping Anet's dynamic events provide a more action driven delivery of cause and consequence.
Lol I saw this coming a mile away, well played sir.
I know i know cliche forum rubbish. I tip my hat in your kind acknowledgement.
Its difficult to get it across without upsetting either camp, choice has been the buzz word in all gaming to replace the "sandbox" class of the early 2000's post GTA IV.
It would just be great if I made my choice between actually walking up and hacking someones head off in game, in control of my character, with the usual method of hacking off said persons face! rather than having to decide what the outcome will be in color coded text, Die Die (hack off his head) or Tea party at about 8 on parsons green (ask him to join you for a hetrosexual encounter). Also why does the consequence always have to be DEATH OR CAKE, why not be ambiguous, or offer options where the conseuqence seems minor. When you hack said evil person head off he very rarely turns out to be a good person under cover and u bugger it up.
I'm not 100% convinced by guildwars2's method either, as it seems a bit do or die, you either win and progress or lose and withdraw, It would be great to have options that branch outwards rather than tug of wars backwards and forwards.
Probably because the Star Wars movie is not about 'ambiguous' moral choices like The Witcher2 but about Luke vs Vadar and destiny/redemption etc etc.
To the general public Star Wars = Lightsabers and death stars.
hmm I see what you mean,
when anakin refuses to strike down the emperor resulting in the death of mace windu, its a bit like my example above a choice which is so irrationally one way, but i suppose in the series we do see lesser versions of this that aren't so dramatic like when luke refuses to carry on his training and flys to cloud city. and like other bw games each action will net you more or less points either way based on the severity.
I don't particularily assume that gw2 has 98.25 hours to reach max level. But there's a difference between developers waving around 200 hours of unique class content and stating that it takes 1.5 hours per level from level 30 onwards. One is a headline marketting statement that's been used in many headlines and the other is an explanation of a leveling mechanic. Point is one is easily verified the other is not.
Point is that one comes from a source and about a game you're openminded and positive towards, and the other comes from a source and about a game you're much more negative and sceptic about.
Me, I value both the sources equally valid and see no difference in quality of information in them, whether it's 60-70% or 200 gameplay hours or 1.5 hour per level, they're all based on averages and measurements.
(snips bla)
The difference between this an time taken to level after 30 with gw2 is that it's far more easier to accurately prove either by A-Net or the players later, so it's either they're lying/changed it later or their not. Even then I wouldn't particularily reccommend extraporlating max level time from it and definitely not total max amount of unique leveling content in game.
My problem is your using these figures for your rough estimations is that if there could be a large disparity between Bioware's figures and the actual value there'd be an even bigger disparity in your values making it completely worthless. You could say SWTOR is 10 times bigger than X game when it's only 2 etc, spreading large misconceptions.
This is leading nowhere. First, from your words I see that you didn't even bother reading my first posts in this thread else you would have known what was unique of that 200 hours. Your whole statement that I've cut away and the rest, I could've turned the whole argument around, 'why would 1.5 hour per level be valid to ANet? It's just marketing talk' or 'you can measure the 200 hours of gameplay or 60 to 70% of Class Quest content at the start in SWTOR accurately and see if they're lying'. So far, their statements regarding planet sizes were pretty much on spot with the revealed footage, so if all those statements where they throw with figures and percentages was already correct, then I don't see why they'd suddenly be lying when they make statements with percentages and figures when they talk about the questing or leveling content.
You think those numbers could be way off in reality when the game is launched? Fine, then don't believe it, it can be checked after SWTOR or GW2 or other games are launched.
As for the worldsizes, you're too late: people who pay attention to available footage and info already know that SWTOR will be a hell of a lot bigger than Rift, because they've already seen how large a number of SWTOR planets are, enough to confirm the statements of BW devs that planets indeed are very large and approach Rift size, and if Alderaan is as large as 8 WoW zones as they claim, which is easy to trust after seeing Tatooine, then yes, Alderaan is close to Rift size as well.
I'm not just making some vague statements, I base it on the information that I have or that's available, that's a difference.
But hey, you choose to disbelieve anything until the MMO's are released, I choose to make educated guesses that can become more and more accurate and if needed adjusted when more info becomes available. Seeing that we approach this differently, I'd say our ways part here, we both know the stance of the other party in this.
Loved how the vast majority of your arguement revolved around planet sizes, something I didn't even mention nor had anything to do with arguement whatsoever. Lovely side stepping.
Anyway my problem is coming from a scientific background, what your using to calculate these things are so vague that'll they'll give your massive, trully massive percentage errors. If you have a calculation that could likely have such large uncertainities you ignore it as it's completely useless, and you wait until you have more information to produce a more accurate model, not a perfect model but at least something inside of the right ball park. Hence why I said this whole thread at this point in time is worthless. As it won't evn give you a useful rough estimation.
I do enjoy leveling but I'm not an alt type of player, and so most of those unique questlines are wasted on me. I'd actually prefer a game with a much longer time requirement to reach max level, without being forced into grouping while I'm leveling. I like the idea of a level indicating time spent rather than incrementally better gear.
I don't yet know enough about the game to decide if I'll buy it. I played KOTOR but got bored roughly 2/3rds of the way through and quit. I didn't buy SWG for the simple reason that they didn't deem space battles a priority at lauch, and that was the one thing I wanted most. Hopefully TOR gives us some epic space campaigns like the old tie fighter series did.
Regarding cinematics, I think they're great if you are soloing. But if your questing with people that skip them then they'll just boot you for slowing them down.
Anyway my problem is coming from a scientific background, what your using to calculate these things are so vague that'll they'll give your massive, trully massive percentage errors. If you have a calculation that could likely have such large uncertainities you ignore it as it's completely useless, and you wait until you have more information to produce a more accurate model, not a perfect model but at least something inside of the right ball park. Hence why I said this whole thread at this point in time is worthless. As it won't evn give you a useful rough estimation.
While it is completely useless for a scientist, and any scientist would cringe at seeing figures and calculations like this in a report, we're not exactly talking science.
For random conversation sparking, and generating lots of forum discussion, it works fine. That's what colorful guessing is for! To make conversation!
My problem is your using these figures for your rough estimations is that if there could be a large disparity between Bioware's figures and the actual value there'd be an even bigger disparity in your values making it completely worthless. You could say SWTOR is 10 times bigger than X game when it's only 2 etc, spreading large misconceptions.
As for the worldsizes, you're too late: people who pay attention to available footage and info already know that SWTOR will be a hell of a lot bigger than Rift, because they've already seen how large a number of SWTOR planets are, enough to confirm the statements of BW devs that planets indeed are very large and approach Rift size, and if Alderaan is as large as 8 WoW zones as they claim, which is easy to trust after seeing Tatooine, then yes, Alderaan is close to Rift size as well.
I'm not just making some vague statements, I base it on the information that I have or that's available, that's a difference.
But hey, you choose to disbelieve anything until the MMO's are released, I choose to make educated guesses that can become more and more accurate and if needed adjusted when more info becomes available. Seeing that we approach this differently, I'd say our ways part here, we both know the stance of the other party in this.
Loved how the vast majority of your arguement revolved around planet sizes, something I didn't even mention nor had anything to do with arguement whatsoever. Lovely side stepping.
Anyway my problem is coming from a scientific background, what your using to calculate these things are so vague that'll they'll give your massive, trully massive percentage errors. If you have a calculation that could likely have such large uncertainities you ignore it as it's completely useless, and you wait until you have more information to produce a more accurate model, not a perfect model but at least something inside of the right ball park. Hence why I said this whole thread at this point in time is worthless. As it won't evn give you a useful rough estimation.
Look at the red comments, you were the one that talked about "10 times bigger than X game when it's only 2", when I said that '10 times' statement I was talking about worldsizes, so wow, strange that I replied with my comment about planet sizes and world sizes when you quote a comment of mine that directly linked to that, eh?
Besides, if you don't like threads like this one and find it useless to discuss or speculate about amount of content because you find the available data insufficient for accurate measurements or even making guesses, then here's a tip for you, don't follow those threads if you don't like the topic.
But even if you dismiss the statements of BW devs or my calculations, let's use yours for a change
Originally posted by Warband
I'm thinking 100 hours for light side and dark side and 100-150 for the rest of the time to reach 50. Giving the per route 200-250 hours. You have to remember that this is all marketing talk with very vague numbers. So accepting it at face value is probably incorrect.
100 hrs light/darkside * 8 classes = 800 hours
150 hrs per side per leveling path = 4 * 150 = 600 hours
Heroic/Group content, enough to level on per side = 350 hours
World Arcs = 650 hours
Total = 2400 hours, give or take a few hundred hours (excl crafting, Flashpoint dungeons, Warzones, pvp, etc, purely quest stuff)
Mind you, that's available questing content that we're talking about, split out over 2 factions, 8 classes and multiple questing paths.
While numbers can make things quantifiable for those that are interested in it, the bottomline is that SWTOR will have bucketloads of questing content, more so than most other MMORPG's.
For the reasons why drawing that conclusion, you don't even have to think in figures, although they can make things more insightful: but if an MMORPG has 2 factions with different leveling paths then you'll already encounter less repetition of questing than when there's only 1 faction, the same applies to more starting areas than just 1 (AoC) or 2 (Rift), or when each class has a whole bunch of unique quest content all throughout leveling compared to MMO's that don't have unique class or race specific content, or who have it only for the starter levels up to L15 (LotrO) .
That's simple deduction, even if it is merely speculation.
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."
Comments
I know i know cliche forum rubbish. I tip my hat in your kind acknowledgement.
Its difficult to get it across without upsetting either camp, choice has been the buzz word in all gaming to replace the "sandbox" class of the early 2000's post GTA IV.
It would just be great if I made my choice between actually walking up and hacking someones head off in game, in control of my character, with the usual method of hacking off said persons face! rather than having to decide what the outcome will be in color coded text, Die Die (hack off his head) or Tea party at about 8 on parsons green (ask him to join you for a hetrosexual encounter). Also why does the consequence always have to be DEATH OR CAKE, why not be ambiguous, or offer options where the conseuqence seems minor. When you hack said evil person head off he very rarely turns out to be a good person under cover and u bugger it up.
I'm not 100% convinced by guildwars2's method either, as it seems a bit do or die, you either win and progress or lose and withdraw, It would be great to have options that branch outwards rather than tug of wars backwards and forwards.
Probably because the Star Wars movie is not about 'ambiguous' moral choices like The Witcher2 but about Luke vs Vadar and destiny/redemption etc etc.
To the general public Star Wars = Lightsabers and death stars.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
SWTOR will have questing that leaves you 3 options and outcomes, and they're often not as cut and dry or 'pure evil' and 'pure good' as people might think.
Here's a simple question for you: do you like the traditional textbased MMO questing that you see in all current MMO's right now, and do you want that it stays the same? That's the only question that you have to ask yourself.
Because 3 MMO cmopanies are betting that people prefer their quests to not stay the same as they have been in MMO's, 3 MMO companies are implementing VO and cinematic cutscenes to their quests, and SWTOR on top of that choices in multiple paths in the questlines.
Furthermore, the majority of people who experienced it in the demo prefer SWTOR's approach to questing than the current traditional MMO way.
As for the 3 to 4 days having capped characters that are screaming "I am bored to tears", you know how ridiculous that sounds, right? If people get bored, they get bored, happens in all MMO's.
But the number of gameplay hours to reach level cap gives a clue to how long it'll take most of the MMO gamers to be busy with the journey, the leveling and questing. 200 hours is a good indication that it'll cost the vast majority 2 to 3 months to reach level cap.
Besides, if you still think that SWTOR is not an MMORPG you might want to read up on the available info and ask yourself what an (themepark) MMORPG means and what features it has.
As for my OP, I like it when the MMORPG's I play have a huge abundance in content and huge worlds, so far it seems SWTOR both in amount of (questing) content as well as in worldsize will surpass most of the MMORPG's at its launch. Some people don't care how much leveling content or paths there are or how big an ingame world is, I happen to do care about those. The more there is to explore and the more there is to leveling for alts that I haven't already done before, the more it'll add to my enjoyment of a game.
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."
Well, obviously tastes and preferences differ. The overall majority liked the questing in AoC and they disliked it when that questing changed after Tortage.
In fact, I've seen as good as only complaints that were about how the world in AoC after Tortage felt different and that afterwards it was the 'same old' questing, I've seen as good as none of people that said 'thank god that I'm back to regular questing after Tortage'.
Anyway, for the minority of pople who prefer their questing to be without VO/cinematics, they can get the quest subtitled and skip. However, based on all the reports of people who played it, you're in a minority, most prefer the VO/cinematic way to just skipping quest text. If you hate it that much, you're going to do a lot of skipping in SWTOR, GW2 and TSW.
Those hours might be wasted for you, but a whole lot of people see it as a great investment. I guess there's an MMORPG out there for everyone, luckily enough for you there'll be other MMO's out there who will have the traditional textbased way of quests.
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."
hmm I see what you mean,
when anakin refuses to strike down the emperor resulting in the death of mace windu, its a bit like my example above a choice which is so irrationally one way, but i suppose in the series we do see lesser versions of this that aren't so dramatic like when luke refuses to carry on his training and flys to cloud city. and like other bw games each action will net you more or less points either way based on the severity.
Loved how the vast majority of your arguement revolved around planet sizes, something I didn't even mention nor had anything to do with arguement whatsoever. Lovely side stepping.
Anyway my problem is coming from a scientific background, what your using to calculate these things are so vague that'll they'll give your massive, trully massive percentage errors. If you have a calculation that could likely have such large uncertainities you ignore it as it's completely useless, and you wait until you have more information to produce a more accurate model, not a perfect model but at least something inside of the right ball park. Hence why I said this whole thread at this point in time is worthless. As it won't evn give you a useful rough estimation.
I do enjoy leveling but I'm not an alt type of player, and so most of those unique questlines are wasted on me. I'd actually prefer a game with a much longer time requirement to reach max level, without being forced into grouping while I'm leveling. I like the idea of a level indicating time spent rather than incrementally better gear.
I don't yet know enough about the game to decide if I'll buy it. I played KOTOR but got bored roughly 2/3rds of the way through and quit. I didn't buy SWG for the simple reason that they didn't deem space battles a priority at lauch, and that was the one thing I wanted most. Hopefully TOR gives us some epic space campaigns like the old tie fighter series did.
Regarding cinematics, I think they're great if you are soloing. But if your questing with people that skip them then they'll just boot you for slowing them down.
While it is completely useless for a scientist, and any scientist would cringe at seeing figures and calculations like this in a report, we're not exactly talking science.
For random conversation sparking, and generating lots of forum discussion, it works fine. That's what colorful guessing is for! To make conversation!
Look at the red comments, you were the one that talked about "10 times bigger than X game when it's only 2", when I said that '10 times' statement I was talking about worldsizes, so wow, strange that I replied with my comment about planet sizes and world sizes when you quote a comment of mine that directly linked to that, eh?
Besides, if you don't like threads like this one and find it useless to discuss or speculate about amount of content because you find the available data insufficient for accurate measurements or even making guesses, then here's a tip for you, don't follow those threads if you don't like the topic.
But even if you dismiss the statements of BW devs or my calculations, let's use yours for a change
100 hrs light/darkside * 8 classes = 800 hours
150 hrs per side per leveling path = 4 * 150 = 600 hours
Heroic/Group content, enough to level on per side = 350 hours
World Arcs = 650 hours
Total = 2400 hours, give or take a few hundred hours (excl crafting, Flashpoint dungeons, Warzones, pvp, etc, purely quest stuff)
Mind you, that's available questing content that we're talking about, split out over 2 factions, 8 classes and multiple questing paths.
While numbers can make things quantifiable for those that are interested in it, the bottomline is that SWTOR will have bucketloads of questing content, more so than most other MMORPG's.
For the reasons why drawing that conclusion, you don't even have to think in figures, although they can make things more insightful: but if an MMORPG has 2 factions with different leveling paths then you'll already encounter less repetition of questing than when there's only 1 faction, the same applies to more starting areas than just 1 (AoC) or 2 (Rift), or when each class has a whole bunch of unique quest content all throughout leveling compared to MMO's that don't have unique class or race specific content, or who have it only for the starter levels up to L15 (LotrO) .
That's simple deduction, even if it is merely speculation.
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."