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TOR story and gameplay mechanics do not mix
farmerfred
Member Posts: 46
A little about myself. I was one of the lucky ones to have been invited to the closed beta. I was apart of many builds and my opinion of the game comes from first hand experience. I've had many characters wiped because of new builds, so I've played the game a few times from level 1.
The feel of war is broken because of the mob "tagging" system
So you start up the game and you're introduced to this beautiful and exciting cinematic. The Empire has attacked a Republic station! Excitement errupts as smuggler, trooper, and jedi alike race into action to fight off the waves of enemy troopers and droids. Then comes the jedis duel. Master and apprentice versus master and apprentice. You're drawn in, this is exciting! There is action everywhere, everyone working together to fight the oppossing faction. I'm immediately drawn into this game!
So I make my trooper totally excited that I'm going to be joining this galactic war. I choose Republic and I get another epic, exciting, emotionally invested, battle (not going to go into this video). Again, I'm tottally psyched. I'm ready to join. Get me in there coach!
My trooper is made, and my story starts on a drop ship, about to kick some seperatists butt! At this point my mentality is a feeling of us versus the empire or anyone who helps the empire. I pick up my first missions to go into a small town to kill mobs, deactivate jammers, disable missle launcher. On my way I see fellow troopers beside me and smugglers.
This is where gameplay mechanics and story don't blend. I don't know why bioware thought of keeping the old tagging system in their mmo when it does not mesh well with their story. Within five minutes my mentality changes from "us vs the empire" to "me vs everyone else". I'm no longer working with my fellow republic citizens, I'm trying to 'tag' that mob before he/she does so I can get the experience, rather than everyone working together to destroy the sepretists.
So, I no longer want to help someone because the mob is grey and I get nothing out of it. Same with the jammers. It's a race for me to get there before anyone else. If someone gets there 2 seconds before me, shouldn't I get experience as well? (I bet all you weekenders wish that happened with the imprisoned jedis you had to free) The jammer is down, objective complete....for him but not me. Bioware decided to stick with the old formula of having click-able items for quests respawn after awhile and only reward those who clicked the item and those in their group.
I have to train to become a better smuggler, whaaa?
Training got really tedious in later builds. Before I didn't have to train as often for the next rank of a skill. It feels like Bioware took a step backwards here. Many MMOs have had this feature where you purchase rank x of skill y when all it does is increase dmg, time, etc. It does not feel natural as say, a smuggler to have to go to a smuggler trainer to increase in skill with an ability he uses 10 times a fight. Shouldn't it increase naturally? Did Han go train his pistols every year? Training this way does not make sense in this universe.
Ok, it makes sense for some characters, like trooper, but I'd argue for new abilities only and not rank increases.
I'm sorry, I can't take that job...you're apart of the empire
This made me scratch my head. There are two mirrored jedi classes on both sides yet a smuggler can't be apart of the empire, or a bounty hunter apart of the republic? Why can't I be an Empire trooper? It makes no sense when you stop and think about it. It's probably a design decision. I bet their thinking went something like this, "The game can't have every class on BOTH sides, we need some variety to the two factions." And so you can't be a republic bounty hunter even though it logically makes sense.
A new coat of paint
To sum up, it feels like Bioware looked at what gameplay mechanics work in the current gen of MMOs and slapped a Star Wars story on top of it even though the mechanics do not blend with the story. When I'm getting a sense of me vs my fellow player while playing; while the story is telling me it's really us vs them, you get a feeling that something isn't working here. They should have looked at their story and made gameplay mechanics that worked with it, not against it.
Edit: Simple idea on how to blend story and mechanics
If you don't like the GW2 theme fix for TOR I have a very simple and I think good idea to help with the feel of the game. I'll give this to you for free bioware. Ok, so we are all aware that most areas you are in have a bonus quest of kill mob x amount of times. We can agree that this encourages players to kill as many mobs on their way to their primary objective. But with the current tagging system the story and mechanics conflict.
Here's the simple fix. If any mob around you dies within eyeshot, you get exp for that kill, or maybe at least 25% heal to player, damage to npc, or damage taken from mob to get credit for that kill (as a way to discourage afkers). So helping with that mob will increase your bonus quest. It also feels like you're helping with that ongoing war everyone is talking about. You even worked with your fellow players. Sounds more engaging. Now the question is, is loot and experience shared as well? Everything else is up to debate. You can say he get's a % or if that mob is worth 500xp then everyone who particapated gets 500xp. Loot could be a random loot table for everyone so everyone gets something.
Now we have everyone working together against a common enemy. Sound more like the story.
Comments
Tagging stops kill stealing which was the original reason it appeared in MMO's. The problem with everyone competing for the same objective is always present when the herd is in the same place; after a few days or so this will stop as the main herd has moved on.
Your point about training I fully agree with.
You do have a point about the smuggler and BH and maybe these would have been better as neutral classes; who knows, maybe in the future. Not surprising though that a republic trooper isn't able to work for the empire dopn't you think?
The gameplay mechanic is standard themepark; all you can do is live with it.
Well in that case there is a game you'll love to play sometime next year and I'm not joking ha ha, it's actually good to say something like that and not lie.
I felt somewhat the same way, no issue on the why can't I be a empire trooper and what not though.
Gameplay is definately an issue with me for this game, but only depends on how you look at it I guess. Maybe I messed up by beta testing another game before playing SWTOR
.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
You were a long time beta tester and thats all you have to complain about?
Do you work for a rival games company?
the game cant please every1, and it wont.
Sorry OP, but it sounds like MMORPGs may not be your kind of game.
yeah, it made me instanly skip past it. i'm sure there was somthing worth reading in there too.
I can get into a lot more (example: galactic market not having a search function by name), but I wanted to focus on how gameplay mechanics and story do not mesh. That is what hit me the hardest, because I was expecting to be apart of something big. With the 'tag' system you are just soloing and in essence almost playing a single player game. They do have at least one group content area (like a mini-dungeons) per questing hub. However, it turns into the same thing of groups tagging their mobs or clicking the quest-clicking thing before your group. Some of it is phased so you don't run into other groups but again, it feels like you're not apart of a war but a private little area that you and your friends can kill mobs.
Well, it wasn't caps. It's there so you can get the general idea of what the wall of text is saying. It's there for you, the people that don't want to read but want the facts fast. I guess you didn't even get that far....oh well, this conversation isn't for you then.
Why RPG or singleplayer gamers keep writing reviews about swtor, IS A !MMO! FFS. And the trooper that you play in the game, is a member of an elite group called, ¨Havok squad¨ so is not a regular soldier or trooper. People still dont understand that they need to play a game with more than 2000+ players in the same server, swtor is not a SINGLE PLAYER RPG, if you dont know how a MMO works, then leave it or make a CONSTRUCTIVE review about how the game could be better, if you cant do that, then my dear OP you are just one more ¨hater¨. Because you know? GW2 work in the same way, also TSW and even WAR 40K, thats how a MMO works.
I cant wait for this game to be released because that means we will only be a few months away from all these whiners and complainers putting their focus on a different game.
After reading your post pretty sure if thats all you have to say, you may have been in one or two beta weekends.
I feel just the opposite about the mob tagging system, I feel it encourages helping your fellow player. in games i have played that didn't have tagging I would try to help someone kill a mob and get accused of leaching xp off of the player. eventually I just quit helping them, on the other hand, i have never been yelled at about helping someone kill their mob that is tagged.
I get it that you don't get credit for the mob kill and don't get the xp, but you talked about the excitement of just killing all those pesky empire players and wanting to help your fellow people kill everything in the area that was empire related. There is really nothing in this game stopping you from doing that and if everyone was doing that eventually those empire guys would be decimated and everyone would have their quest completed. maybe it wouldn't be as efficient but you would have more of that huge battle feel.
don't get me wrong it would work as well without tagging but the battle would be shorter and you would likely get those players that get mad because you are kill stealing and leaching and overall your xp gain would be less at the end of the "battle".
There is nothing wrong with what the Op has posted, he's not slamming the game. He is doing exactly what alot of people on the forums have asked people to do, clearly explain which systems bug you and why. I agree with him that the tagging system shouldn't be around, personally I think we should just insta-ban all the killstealers and do away with the system. ( I'm a meanie )
They could have very easily based exp gained on damage done, and anyone who slapped it recieved quest credit. I'm sure they have their reasons for not doing so though.
Edit * I also think that the tagging system is a direct cause of the increase of those " I'm going to rush past you killing the mobs guarding the objective and ninja it" players. I'd never really seen many people with that mindset of " F everyone else, I'm in it for me" until the market opened and tagging became the norm.
Actually I think the OP makes a really interesting point. Personally, I think if you are going to draw from other mmo's they missed an excellent opportunity to use the Warhammer public quest system. I think it would have been a great mechanic.
For example, you as the trooper go to an area designated as a public quest area. You join the battle, you and other players fighting together to achieve objective(s), then when the objective(s) are met, rewards are given out based on contribution made.
This would have been great for small to medium sized groups, getting players used to working together to achieve objectives.
Regarding the training aspect. I can see what the OP says, it does feel a bit contrived. Here's another way it could have been handled. Either you learn abilities as you use them, and after sufficient use new abilities from those open up, or you get points to place in a tree. Alternatively, they could have based training off of light/dark points. For example, if you tend to make dark side decisions, you make contact with a dark side smuggler and he teaches you a new ability, perhaps by sending you on quest. For example, suppose you level up to a point you can get dual wield. You go to your trainer and instead of just clicking on a skill and purchasing, he sends you on a little quest where you get a second weapon and must dual wield to succeed.
I also thought it was kind of strange you couldn't have a dark side smuggler or a light side jedi. I guess you can get light/dark side points from decisions, but perhaps they should have made bounty hunter/smuggler a neutral class. Your neutrality would be determined by your ligh/dark decisions, or after acquiring enough light or dark points, you could fully commit to either faction if that is your wish. They could have even included a really cool story element here, about making the final leap and choosing sides. Or you could just stay neutral and play both sides based on dark/light points. A really neat opportunity missed here in my opinion, but I haven't experienced enough of the game to say if it was viable or not.
Great post OP, made me think about a few things.
While playing I ran into this scenario a lot. We are all aware of the bonus missions of kill x mob y amount of times. We all know that mobs come in groups, right. As a trooper sometimes I wouldn't "tag" all three mobs, I may have started with suppression or something that is a single target attack. So now I have one tagged mob, and 2 mobs untagged that are aggroed on me. Along comes a jedi and AOEs my pack of mobs and tags the other two that I was about to engage, so now I'm out of luck of getting all three kills for my bonus because some guy came by to tag my mobs for free kills because I'm going to have to end up finishing them off.
Same goes if I see someone attacking. If I want to help I feel like I should wait until he tags them all so I don't become that dick that just tagged two of the mobs that you wanted to kill to finish your bonus quest.
Agreed, Didn't read a word of it; I think the presentation was rather counter-productive, if the intent was to have people read the post.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That's where a Warhammer Online style of public quest mechanic would really add something. That's one thing about Warhammer I really enjoyed.
I just had to weigh in on the training. With the regards to being as real as possible gaining abilities without training would be the real life equivalant to getting a degree without going to school. Also this is intended as an ingame money sink so to prevent people for amassing alot of money too quickly taking away from the fun of the game. Another reason is that it forces the player to return to a town possibly progressing n a questline and peventing the player from back tracking later, if you are the type of player I am and must complete every quest ( you never know when one quest is a prerequisite to something greater.) But in regards to the game I rather enjoyed it myself and liked how the discussions directly effect progression.
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
My character isn't pursueing a PHD in physics. He's shooting a damn gun. How hard is that? The more you shoot the better you get. It's call experience. You're not going to get better at math by just going to the lectures, you have to do the problems and get the experience, that's how you get better. Not because someone told you how to do somehting. If that were the case, school would be so much simplier.
When I was playing, I'd be wrapped up in my story and have 3 to 5 levels of rank-ups stacked up that I would hold off to train. It's a minor increase in stats to the skill, not training in it isn't stopping me from doing my quests as I was doing them withouth going back to rank up. Only when I went back to the starport on the planet did I rank up, and that might be for awhile.
They already have enough money dumps. Fuel for your ship, companions going on missions, mounts, bag space, respec, light/dark equipment, etc. Do I really need one for rank ups too?
I already replied to this....
Well, it wasn't caps. It's there so you can get the general idea of what the wall of text is saying. It's there for you, the people that don't want to read but want the facts fast. I guess you didn't even get that far....oh well, this conversation isn't for you then.
Actually its kind of ancient history gameplay mechanic. Lotro is a few years old and they have quests where anyone close by can get credit when an objective is completed. It could be argued which is better and which is worse, but your statement that this is standard is false.
The average person should be able to dismiss this through the intuitive use of suspention of disbelief. We all apply this in every game we play.
Oh, and almost all MMOs out there have a story alongside the same or similar mechanics.
I do agree with some of this, it's nice to wait till a person tags all 3 mobs to help, but to really get that all out epic battle feel that the op said they were missing due to the tagging you should all just be running in attacking all the mobs together, if you have to stop and watch someone fight and make sure they get that one hit on each mob before you run in, it really loses that momentum.
Like I said above , it's certainly not the most efficent way to get quests done, but the OP said that he lost that epic feeling of a huge battle and running in checking each mob to see if its tagged and checking to make sure that noone is engaging another mob nearby that untagged mob really takes away from that epic battle feeling imo.
like i had said, if everyone was running in killing everything in sight then eventually you would be the one tagging two mobs from a persons group of mobs and you would get two, and assuming they are killing everything in sight, they would help you kill those two, etc etc.
the point i'm trying to make is that imo tagging doesn't take away from that epic battle feel if everyone is helping everyone else. and i feel that tagging encourages helping others more than non tagging systems (with the exception of the warhammer pq system as was stated above)
No worries bro because really the title made most of the fans or heavy supporters not want to read it, had it be something postivie or least the title say "SWTOR Gameplay is the best and suits the story here is why..." they would suffer from looking at red text.
Any who do beg to differ, I know you guys will try to find a legit reason to concur but that is how it is because honestly I've done it before and that's usually the case.
Unless it's some mental disorder or something then that's understandable.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
I don't see how tagging encourages a system of helping. If I see you engaged in three mobs I'm just going to overlook you and seek out mobs that are not engaged, because I'm working on so many quests in the area. I may be working on a collect, kill, or gather quest. Helping you will give me nothing but the satisfaction of helping another player. Which I do if I see them in trouble, but it does not feel like the opening movies where you see big groups clash as an epic battle is happening all around and help is everywhere.