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A closer look at multiplayer and MMO feel: what demo players say
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
In another post I focused on what players were saying regarding the planets and environments. In this one I'll focus on what people who played the game say about their multiplayer experiences or how they answer a question that emerges from time to time, the question that pops up by people who only see SWTOR's story immersive questing and who can't imagine it work successfully in an MMO: is SWTOR a real MMORPG, just like the other MMO's we know?
This is what a number of people who played the game are saying:
So we grouped together and decided we were going to take this on as a multiplayer game... we went to the spaceport, as part of my quest. We fought our way into one of the hangers (Samm couldn’t go in because it was my quest, but once I went in it opened up for him to follow me) where my target was standing near his ship repairing it, and I engaged him in conversation... Overall, this play session taught me that SWTOR really is an MMO, and not a single-player game. We were able to group together from the very start of the game and start adventuring together through quests and we could explore all over the place together. Let me assure all of you that this game is an MMO... I know there has been a lot of concern about that, and I think that most of those concerned people will be very satisfied once they get their hands on the game (Brandon, Torocast)
At one point I grouped up with 3 other Troopers. I had a lot of fun with this group, even though it was hard to stay together as everyone kept getting lost/seperated. At one point, we all used our grenade launchers on a group of about 3 separatists. That was absolutely beautiful and lived up to my expectations of a trooper group. I felt very powerful. They all died instantly and the fireworks were glorious (DeathCorp)
Over a day's play, Star Wars: The Old Republic settles into a polished and comfortably familiar MMO rhythm that does enough to meet expectations. Occasionally, it shows flashes of originality, flair and Lucas-powered matinee excitement that set it apart. We've seen enough, at last, to believe that The Old Republic is a real MMO, and no-one's idea of a failed one (Eurogamer, 2010)
I think Blizzard and BioWare have a lot in common on this front. What Blizzard did so brilliantly with World of Warcraft was replace the "grind mobs to level" trope with something from the single-player RPG genre: quests. BioWare is taking that a step further and replacing the "silent questing" model with a truly interactive quest system, the kind popularized by (and now expected in) modern single-player games. That doesn't mean SWTOR is a single-player game that just happens to be online (especially given how much cooler quest dialogue is alongside your mates), but rather that SWTOR is employing beloved single-player mechanics to fill gaping holes in MMORPGs, holes that formed naturally when the very first designers tried stuffing thousands of people into a MUD/RPG hybrid. It wasn't truly possible to create an amazing MMORPG back then... but SWTOR is one giant step closer - Royce, Massively
Coming away from The Old Republic, I'm more than optimistic. It's an incredibly polished game, and even more than that, it's plainly fun. The stories already show a lot of dynamism and charm, and the complexity of the game is already visible. It's a little hard to tell if the combat is going to compete with other successful MMOs, it looks like it does just fine for this early game stuff. Once they make the cooperative elements of the game less buggy, they'll have a title that is already leaps and bounds better than many MMOs on the market, and if they apply the same amount of polish to all areas of the game that they applied to these origin worlds, BioWare, LucasArts, and EA may have the next big MMO on the marketplace - Perlee, mmorpg.com
Like many others, I was on the brink of writing Star Wars: The Old Republic off as an irredeemable, perhaps MMORPG category-maiming mistake – in short, a failure one of truly Galactic proportions. Our hands-on sessions at the 2010 GDC and GamesCom were heartbreaking – the game as presented at those points in time just wasn’t fun or laudable in any aspect. I was prepared to not enjoy SWTOR in San Francisco. But with Jedi Immersion Day, BioWare presented the game in its element, presenting us with the beautiful, full-featured world of Tython and letting us find our way. I found the change of pace unsettling at first - I wanted to keep clicking past the cutscenes - but grew to enjoy the cinematic experience as time went on. BioWare won back my confidence, and even though the game has a long ways to go. they’re on-track to create a new, compelling, and... yes, story-driven, type of MMORPG experience - Tentonhammer
This is the Star Wars MMO that Galaxies should have been all along. And it's already got the quality and polish that many other big-name games in the genre failed to launch with. If the rest of the game looks and plays like this, it should be a very successful game when the launch date hits. (Buckland, AtomicGamer)
Overall it was a fun and enjoyable experience with a very polished and competent game that ticks all the boxes for what works well in MMO's (Costello)
The game seemed incredibly well polished compared to any other MMO I have played at beta, and more polished than many MMO's at release (Helderash)
What we were more curious about, or worried about, was how the RPG emphasis would get along with the MMO part of the game. The most innovative concept is the holo-communication between players. When a player begins a conversation with a quest-giver, a window automatically opens on the screens of other players in the group, asking them to join the conversation. If they stop what they're doing and accept, a hologram version of them appears at the side of their group member, and they're able to watch and participate in the dialogue that follows. Seeing the dialogue is not strictly necessary to getting the related quest, as there is still a "share" button in the quest log to loop in stragglers. But it's a great solution to preserving the RPG experience when dealing with a group of players without forcing the entire group to, for instance, move around a city together. Instead, the group can scatter to complete class quests or visit trainers and vendors, and at the same time pick up quests for the group in the areas they travel. They still get to experience all of the story with a fraction of the legwork (Arstechnica)
As far as group mechanics, few classes are cut and dry, which makes it easier to run heroic quests or flashpoints with a cobbled-together group of players. I ran a level 10 flashpoint, Black Talon, with another imperial agent and two bounty hunters, and we never suffered for lack of a particular class mechanic. The bounty hunters made decent makeshift tanks as we ran around saving the Imperial ship from Republic attackers, and since all classes could heal themselves out of battle, there was little downtime (Arstechnica)
Grouping on Hutta was actually still quite fun. Sidequest dialogue can all be done in multiplayer and so you can start earning your Dark Side and Light Side points along with your friends while having to suffer the consequences of their choices if they make a decision you didn’t want to and win the conversation roll. This may sound like a negative, but it’s actually incredibly social and fun; there’s a kind of “party game” element to it (Bitton, mmorpg.com)
Grouping made things go faster for sure, but what was really interesting was the inclusion of Heroic quest content even on the starting world. We discovered a heroic quest that sent us deep within the bowels of Hutta to wipe out some unsavory characters and creatures in the sewers and found that our group cohesion was quite adequately tested. Crowd controlling enemies, target prioritization, etc., were all important for us to get through the encounter, which ultimately culminated with a fight against a robotic mini-boss who was guarding a glowing Datacron. Datacrons are scattered throughout the game world and offer unique permanent boosts to your statistics. This Datacron was actually part of a set, which when completed would offer even more significant bonuses according to BioWare’s Daniel Erickson (Bitton, mmorpg.com)
We wanted the full-bore experience of playing a massively multiplayer Star Wars game, and that also meant the grouping aspect. So we set out to do something no one else at the immersion day decided to take part in. You see, from the get-go Star Wars: The Old Republic has group content. Many of its features are even designed around group play. They want you to be social, to interact with other players nearby and form lasting relationships in the game. One such feature we were told about before we even sat in front of our stations to play the game, is the holo-com. It takes 'quest' npc interaction -- called missions in The Old Republic -- to an entirely new level. If you're not in range to go join your groupmate at the NPC, you can simply click a button and join the conversation via your holo-communicator. This in essence means that only one person ever has to actually be at an NPC to begin or turn in a mission -- everyone else can be remote and still interact in the conversation portion. another system designed to encourage the multiplayer aspect of MMO is 'Social Points,' a sort of ancillary experience bar. As you participate in conversations with a group, each person is allowed to select the dialogue response they'd like to see play out (Curse)
It's most fun when I team up with two bounty hunters on a heroic quest, where we're running through tunnels and taking out packs of chemilizards and humans. I like being able to hang back and snipe and shoot toxic darts while they draw most of the damage. However, if you're someone who likes being the star of the show, Imperial Agent probably isn't the right class -- my attacks are a lot less flashy than the bounty hunters, who get some crazy move where they hover in the air and rain down lightning on enemies (Dana, IGN)
My assumptions and general expectations were thrown completely out of the window. This is far beyond anything I've seen in previous MMOs. When play testers claim they have a hard time going back to other MMOs, I understand that sentiment now (Karduth)
We'd done something none of their internal testers have ever done: we focused on group content above and beyond anything else, wherever possible. While the first group-based content doesn't come along until right around level five, it's definitely there. Foregoing our class story missions until around level nine, we instead took on the 'heroic' content on the trash planet Hutta. It's stuff that you absolutely must form a group to tackle. It was actually a challenge. Though we struggled along the way we eventually did complete the heroic quests on Hutta. The reward was fantastic: a blue quality item and a lot of experience, not only from turning in the quests, but also from doing the content itself. We managed to outpace everyone else on levels, even while being grouped up doing group-based content, which has notoriously been slower than leveling by yourself in more recent MMOs (Curse)
While flashpoints are certainly exciting, the quantity and level of difficulty involving the group content - even on the first planet players will experience in the game - is very encouraging. It's a bit of a lost aspect of the MMO genre that has fallen by the wayside as studios focus on more casual aspects of leveling progression, and it's one that will be a welcomed return by many (Curse)
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."
Comments
Source?
There has to be a color other than yellow, that stuff is blinding when you got a headache >.>
But I skimmed some of the comments, some of the highlights didn't even seem to be related to the topic. Like being what "galaxies should of been all along"...a themepark?
But Idk how people can doubt this game is a mmo. There is allowed to be all sorts of kinds of mmos, and just because this is hte wow kind instead of the eve kind doesn't mean its not.
Oh and also, grouping and being a mmo doesn't really tell you anything about how sociable the game will be either, which is what im guessing the complaints actually are, though I can't be sure.
Can you put the links in plox?
? Various sources from several events, the names between brackets are the ones quoted. I'm not going to add each and every source link, but here's a few links to some of the sources mentioned, Jedi Immersion Day, UK Community Event 2011, Mike Bitton's BH multiplayer preview, Curse multiplayer handson.
Actually, you'll be surprised, but there's still some people popping up from time to time that state without making a joke, that SWTOR will be a singleplayer game or who question that SWTOR is an MMORPG. Merely because SWTOR is a themepark MMO or will have its quests be more immersive.
I think in the minds of those people it works something like, more attractive quests = less true MMO feel
As for how sociable, we'll only know for sure when the game goes live, but so far it looks like there's some mechanics in place that will encourage doing stuff together more, and from the experiences of some of the demo players, these mechanics are working. Besides, I have been in great communities in MMO's that are as themepark oriented as SWTOR will be.
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."
Simply a jumble of various anecdotal accounts with no mention of a sampling method and no way to infer geenralizability. Perhaps a good starting point for discussion (as this thead was meant to do, and I point this out so folks won't go off making assumptions as to what the entire would-be player base feels) but nothing more.
All I read is "multiplayer" or "coop" tbh. All this teamplay they're talking about has nothing to do with a game being a MMO.
A MMO is defined by the first "M" and groups of 5 players simply aren't massive at all. SWTOR won't even have dungeons for groups of 20 players, and I don't even want to start speaking of anything bigger as it's not going to happen.
Sorry, but there's nothing "massive" about SWTOR, so it's a nothing but a singleplayer-game with coop or multiplayer-modus. Borderlands would aswell be a MMO by the definition of all those statements collected by the OP, which is laughable actually.
Heh, you're being served an example right away, another one thinking SWTOR is going to be a singleplayer-game for the same moronic reason I mentioned earlier, or another person who has maybe zilch experience with themepark MMO's or who got stuck in the sandbox/oldschool MMO mindset as yesterday's news
:
As for the player reports, most people use their brains and common sense and simply know that SWTOR will be an MMORPG, so that's a given for them, but no one who played SWTOR said it was a singleplayer game, a number of them stated clearly that SWTOR felt and played like an MMORPG. As everyone with a brain knows as well
SWTOR will have dungeons with at least 16 players, so there's that.
If you claim that SWTOR isn't an MMORPG, then you should start to claim that LotrO or AoC aren't MMORPG's and as soon as you start doing that, then this just isn't the site for you.
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."
MMO or Singleplayer the game is bland boring and average in every aspect, so who cares if some consider it a Multiplayer game... others a MMORPG... and some others a singleplayer game.
Shit tastes the same no matter what colour your claim it is.
So , I guess you played it extensively, because else you know you're talking out of your ass, right?
And hey, you also know that not everything that you like is mana from heaven and that what you don't like is trash? I mean, I suppose you're not dense enough to believe something like that; if you don't like what you see of SWTOR, fine, go look for something that does rock you off your socks, stop following things that you don't like anyway. There's a whole range of things that I suppose you don't like and don't follow the news of as well, I suggest you add SWTOR to that list as well.
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."
MMO.MAVERICK NO! What have you done!? YOU HAVE CHANGED YOUR AVATAR!
If this was google+, you'd receive a +1, sir.
I'm just curious, did not a single person that played have anything negative or critical to say about the experience?
I mean, i'm glad to hear good things, but as a general rule, I've learned it's best to ignore reviews or opinions that either all positive or all negative as they tend to speak more to the person's bias than to the actual experience in question.
Also stuff like "this is the game that SWG should have been" and "we were the only group to focus on grouping" takes away a lot of the credibility from these people's opinions.
Also, do you have any quotes about "mmo feel"? Most of these seem to talk about small group experiences. Is there anything that talks about having like a few dozen people in one place and indirectly interacting? LIke in a major city hub or pub or market or something? Do they all feel different and diverse, does it make sense that they are there? anything like that?
"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
Why do people keep linking the word massive to party size ? ...
In my book massive means scale, immersion in a big living breathing world. Not the few people you happen to have around you at that time.
Why don't you stick to arguing pointless schemantics (like Multiplayer or Singleplayer), which you are so much better at.
Are you implying that you have played it extensively to know better? So why do you have to quote other's statements about it? Does it have anything to do with you being the numero uno SWTOR Fanboy which pretty much means your credibility is zero.
At least i feel secure in my average deductive skills to analyze the info i have on this game... info i have been provided by the developers from blogs, interviews, demos etc to make my own judgement of the game which is Boring, Bland, Average. Don't need to quote some random dude that also finds the game generic to the point of pulling out your eyeballs to reinforce my opinion.
So if i liked the game and had posted something like: This superb, immersive, well thoughout and totally massive mmo is one of the best games coming in 2012. I am sure you would have quoted me again to post what you said in your last paragraph.... riiiiiiiiiiiiight, because that juvenile argument really doesn't go both ways.... no siree surely doesn't... and forums are for people with positive opinions only! Gotcha!
Yeah, i don't know. I mean, these quotes do confirm that "yes, you can group", but you're right, they don't really say much about the massive piece. Still, i guess maybe there were a lot of people that thought there wouldn't be any grouping in SWTOR (despite it being announced ages ago), well, now their minds are set at ease.
"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
Yeah, it felt like avatar-switching time
Like I said in that other thread about planets, I find that the (very) few, most negative comments are often handpicked and posted here by TOR opponents, while the multitude of normal or positive comments gets ignored. Just look at the most negative TOR quotes being posted as thread, when you read the actual preview or blog they're taken from, that's often a far more balanced report, with negative, neutral and positive mixed in all together. Reading most of the articles and reports btw from professional as well as common demo players, the vast majority were overall positive to enthusiastic.
In this thread I picked purely the quotes where people talked about 'MMO feel' or multiplayer experiences because, as I said, some people like to parrot the whole 'singleplayer game' song - shutting off their brain and logic sense in the process imo - so I wanted to put what actual players said regarding their experiences. In that search I didn't encounter any player stating that SWTOR isn't an MMORPG or that it's a singleplayer game.
There were some as you see in the OP that talked about it feeling like a MMO hub or that it felt like Alderaan. But use your common sense, SWTOR will have the advantages and disadvantages of themepark MMO's: yes, there'll be players running around, doing their thing as demo players stated, but if you feel that players doing their quests solo isn't really an 'mmo feel' in other themepark MMO's, then you'll feel the same when you see other players doing their own thing and quests solo in SWTOR.
SWTOR isn't a sandbox MMORPG, so for those who like the community feeling that sandbox MMORPG's provide, and that maybe in their eyes themepark MMO's don't, then SWTOR won't be their kind of MMO as well. If you can enjoy the MMO and gameplay experience in current themepark MMO's, then chances are very high that you'll enjoy it in SWTOR as well.
So, maybe the question that people should ask themselves is: do I enjoy the MMO feel in current themepark MMORPG's?
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."
Massive at least the way i understand it, is actually not party size, most of the time in EQ i had a party size of 6 with a few raids that went up to like 30 or so when you took on a boss, but those were raids so they were different. In normal gameplay it ranged from 4 to 6 people.
The term massive just means a metric ton of people (in the thousands?) can log on to the same game at the same time and potentionally meet each other at any given time if they want.
For example merely because the group size is 4 does not mean say 50 people couldn't team up in a couple of raid groups and take down a world boss or go into open PvP and kill each other. Heck you could have 50 on 50 in open world PvP and that would work. Quite well actually.
Group size doesn't not equal the massive part, that equals the multiplayer part. People get these confused, it happens
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Nope, I wouldn't have quoted you, only if you had played the game extensively, and even then you'd have been only 1 of the many opinions that demo players gave, just like the quotes above are also just a few of the many.
Forums are for people to post all kinds of opinions, personally I've always found it moronic that people keep paying attention to and following games they have no interest in playing at all, what kind of weird twist of mind is it that makes people following things they don't like at all?!
Also personally I prefer people who are able to see things more objectively, with reservation and balancing the good as well as the bad traits of things, in this case MMORPG's, in how they regard things. Sadly enough, you have a whole lot of people here, on an mmorpg.com, who ironically enough hate/dislike most of the games within that genre, and spend more time bashing and trashing MMO's than discussing the MMO's they like or are interested in to play.
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."
The answer - at least for me - is "it depends on the game". Among themepark games only:
I loved the MMO feel of Tabula Rasa, the world really made you feel like you and the other players were all in the same war.
Rift is pretty good, mainly because of the easy-access to mass player events and the game being designed to involve you in what's going on in the zone and in what other people are doing.
EQ2 is pretty bad. It was better back when people actually needed to go to the same city, now, not so much. Guild Halls have destroyed much communal experience, or rather, they moved it to a much smaller scale. Still, it's kinda nice to be in the GH and see who's there, what they're doing, etc. It doesn't help that the world is awful for lore and immersion.
LoTRO and AoC are kinda in the middle, they're great for lore and immersion and their cities are some of the best of all Themepark MMOs, but beyond that it's pretty hit'n'miss for any interaction.
So it's possible for a fully Themepark MMO to have good immersion and/or MMO interaction and it's possible for a fully Themapark MMO to have poor immersion and/or interaction.
Saying "it's themepark, therefore it sucks at immersion" is just as stupid as saying "it's themepark therefore it's good at immersion". Being themepark or sandbox doesn't say anything about the quality of the game. Just talks to the limits of defined content and streamlining.
"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
I read your original post and it was juvenile at best. And no forums is not for positive opinions only but no one shoudl try to pass their opinions as facts. As far your deductive skills to analyze info? lol i had to laugh at that one. That is a more polite way to say 'hey i am still talking out of my a**". Play the game or a demo/trial then give us your opinions in a mature way without making any reference to sh*t/poop etc and some one might take you seriously.
Thank you! Someone who GETS it!
Those who link massive with amount of players and party size...just look at games like CoD or Battlefield or M.A.G. - Those aren't MMORPGs yet you can have massive parties or lots of people playing them. What separates an MMORPG from the rest is the size of the world(s) and the sheer amount of content/crap to do.
That's because it's not the word 'massive'.
Yes, I'm going to reveal to you one of the amazing, dirty secrets of the MMORPG world.
The first 'M' stands for 'Massively'. Which means it's an adverb. Directly modifying multiplayer.
Hence, a game should technically be massively multiplayer in order to qualify.
(... and I think SW:ToR qualifies, but hey, what do I know? I've never played the game.)
It doesn't have to neccessarily be a massive party though, as long as the other people are... y'know, around. Somewhere. Theoretically where you can interact with them somehow.
1) Good thing noone did then. Unless you've somehow managed to find a way to turn an opinion on a subjective matter into fact.
2) if you aren't capable of making deductions on a game from demos, interviews on content and game mechanics etc it's ok. Nothing to be ashamed of, or laught at others that can to make you feel better. Pay and play then make your judgement if that's your thing.
I'll give my opinion anyway i see fit (moderation willing) and the only person i am concerned abou taking it seriously is myself...
These comments by 'demo players' really aren't worth much. I put more stock in the reviews around the net by people who have played the game from start to finish, they don't sway whether i'll play it or not but at least they give an accurate picture of what i should expect.
To put it simply, those that are complaining about the game are complaining for the simple fact that they know nothing else, but it won't stop them from buying the game.
Whats one thing I've learned from spending so much time on internet forums? The majority of the time, people are all talk and absolutely no action. They'll say they won't play something because its the most boring looking game in the world, and turn around and preorder the collectors edition.
I run the paces, I play the arguing game with the same people time and again, but I know that when the game launches, they'll be there, regardless of the arguments, no matter how many times they've sworn off the game. Its just what forum goers do.