Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
This game is slowly winning me over
GrumpyJester
Member Posts: 96
I do believe "What Would WoW Do?" is printed on the office walls at Bioware, and so I dismissed the game initially. All recent themepark MMOs look to WoW, but SWTOR is staring. And if there's one MMO I'm sick of, it's WoW.
But now I'm having second thoughts. You see, one of the main reasons I got so bored with WoW was that it turned me into an MMO-questing machine. You worked through your list of (daily) quests and signed on for random dungeon or battleground instances. It wasn't a world anymore, it was a lobby, filled with chores.
Here I hope SWTOR will be different. With all the dialogue voiced, the sheer quantity of quests will probably be lower. Combined with the story focus, we'll probably see fewer quest givers but with longer quest chains. This alone will help a great deal: the main reason I don't bother reading quests is that you get them 10 at a time, and they're usually one-off tasks with little to no follow-up.
Secondly, there's the fact that you get your own starship and companions/crew. I was actually quite pleased when I read about the Crew Skills and how they work. It all helps with the immersion, and it also means that a lot of the "chores" can actually be done by your Crew. Same goes for the PvP objectives, where effort was made to make them fit in the world. It is this focus on immersion that I think will help make SWTOR an MMORPG instead of just an MMO, which was really my main beef with WoW all along.
TLDR: It's not so much WoW's mechanics that I hate, as it is its lack of immersion. SWTOR will hopefully fix this.
Comments
I agree with you there. I haven't played a decent MMO where I felt deeply engaged or involved since SWG and Planetside. (
)
"He's no good to me dead."
I think SWTOR will be less immersive in some areas due to things like lack of day/night cycle. IMO it's a hugh, and I can't imagine a MMO without it.
That is a shame, though I don't think a day/night cycle is that important to me. I'll have to experience it to be sure though.
Another thing that I think will help you care more about the quests and what you're doing is the alignment system. Yes, Light vs Dark is pretty simplistic as far as alignment systems go, but the fact that how you complete quests actually has consequences (no matter how small) helps a great deal.
From what i understand of things regarding day and night is that they don't cycle like if you stand in the middle of the street the day slowly shifts from night to day and from day to night but certain areas of the game world are set in day and others at night or various others times of day.
Kind of like AoC where you had one point where it was day and one where it was night, it didn't slide between the two but you did have points where you were in the same town at night.
While i would have liked day/night cycles, it's not really that big of a deal to me. They never really meant anything anyway beyond it just looked darker.
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.
Yes. It's more like a single player RPG.
But it means that no area will change. The night time story areas of Tattooine, will always be night time. The sunset areas will always be sunset.
I know from Guild Wars 1, who didnt have it also, that it's a big deal. Your hopefully going to play this game for years, and it's paramount, that you don't grow tired of the "levels" in the game. the day night cycles help make it more dynamic and turn it into a real world.
Right now, im playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Witcher 2. Both are very good Single play RPGs with great stories, but their limitations of their immersion, is not something I would be satisfied with in a MMO setting.
At the end of the day, your still playing the same story/outcome as every other one of your class. I think SWTOR will be great, but I have my doubts about it being something that will be fresh for months, let alone years.
But who says it has to? Many people loved LOTRO, played it til max, and unsubscribed once they ran out of content, and then resubscribed once content was released. It's not a bad model, if the alternative booring it's players to death with daily quests(as OP points out about WoW).
How is it even reasonable to expect a game to constantly entertain its players with high quality no-grind, no-stalling content? It is because we pay a monthly fee(except Guild Wars 2.. which is not abliged to release content at same pace) but the truth is that developers cant make higfh quality content fast enough. This is true for DLC like Half-Life Episodes as it is for MMO content.
I think that creating voice acted and cinematics and multiple story branches quests like SWTOR has, will make it take even longer if anything. how are they going to throw out new stories that are voice acted with cinematics for every class constantly? I could imagine that they would have to make a compromise(shared quests between all classes, fewer multiple branching storylines..).
voice acting is expenssive. mo cap is expenssive. cinematics take time. so these are story elements on top of everything else - making the quests, dungeons, pvp, space game, loot, monsters, areas, spells and so on. creating a fourth pillar also created tons of more stuff for them to do.
What if we have to wait 4-5-6 months before getting content due to this? LucasArts stalled the hell out of SoE because every single quest and text had to be verified to see if it was proper SW cannon. smeh.
They are already working on new content, I read in an interview that they are already working on content for after the game is released. The day and night cycles make sense in the fact you have multiple worlds with different moons suns etc...
In Bioware we trust!
As for the VO work, yes, that's an added factor, but aas for the mocap stuff and the cinematics, I imagine that this'll get faster and faster as the groundwork gets laid out and more of it has been done. The initial working stuff out usually costs more time than the followups that uses the same model.
For example, it's relatively easy to create a mocap database where more and more specific moves, gestures and expressions are accumulated, after which you'll only have to change and tweak some variables to generate the majority of scenes.
When it comes to immersion, we'll have to see. There are some pros and some cons, as far as I see it, I think that the pros outweight the cons for the majority of people, but time will tell.
If the quest leveling experience can be made more entertaining and fun than it so far has been in current MMO's, then that's still hundreds of hours per character that is of higher quality of gameplay and enjoyment than it usually is.
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."
I can't understand how having bots working for you adds to the immersion, it's the contrary for me, I get immersion from other real people, not bots which are rather immersion breakers. But everyone is different.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Erm... i dont understand, you complain about wow end game which is dailies etc, yet you didnt say what you like about tor end-game, but instead focus on the leveling .... Are you saying that TOR end-game wont be dungeaon claw?
RIP Orc Choppa
I'm fairly sure there will be real people in the game as well.
When the sun went down in Kithcior Forest it kind of got your attention, LOL. Day/night does mean something. Weather means something. It's all pieces of the illusion.
---------------------------
Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
Actually I'd have to disagree here. If anything breaks immersion its the guy in chat shouting leetspeak and running in circles around you while you pass by. He doesn't care about whats going on in the world, he just wants to be a jerk so people think he's cool and funny. The bots on the other hand, always stay in character, increase believability of the atmosphere, and even move the story along.
Granted people are more fun to play with, bots are certainly more "immersive" in my eyes.
Kithicor Forest.. ahhh the memories.... A shadowed man pet hit your for 350 damage. You died.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
This game slowly won me over, I've now pre-ordered it and I am eagerly awaiting its release
Thank you for sharing, well written and thought provoking. I would agree with you.
I think Bioware is taking a LOT of effort to immerse you into the universe and the story, as well as really invest you into your character - including their home (ship) and companions.
In comparison to Rift, well, Rift is probably WORSE then WoW when it comes to the whole "here are 3 pointless quests, go do them without reading, ok, now come back and turn in and get 3 more pointless quests... go do them without reading.. ok, now..."
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
I've never heard anyone, certainly not on these forums, say any of this stuff before!
Please, go on!
Touched a nerve, have I?
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
It doesnt matter, we all will buy this game anyway.... wanna know why ?
Couse we are bored to dead by the current mmos...
No I'm serious.
You obviously have extensive experience playing SWTOR and are not afraid to break the NDA so I'd like to hear everything you have to say about your experiences with the game.
I think both Bioware and Anet are taking the Themepark in the directions it should go. As well as are adding substance to the departments they've lacked in.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Canned sarcastic responses upon each other. My, my, whatever did I do to deserve it?
(aside from the humble act of sharing my views)
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
I agree. The biggest immersion killer is other people.
Come on... isn't this the same old themepark vs sandbox argument that we've seen and read 10,000 times now?
Really, when will sandbox fans start to reflect and just move on, to MMO's that actually can captivate them and capture their interest? Why even spend time following a game of which they know that it has a gameplay design that abhors them, maybe possibly even make them physically feel sick and on the verge of vomiting? Really, it's a great mystery to me, hardcore sandbox fans or themepark haters actually following themepark MMO's most of their time instead of games they might actually like
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."