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MMO = persistent and seamless world.
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
If an MMO doesn't do this then it feels like any other game and I have to ask the question why I should subscribe? With SWTOR I never feel like I'm part of some seamless world or Galaxy because there are so many loading screens and instances. All the gameplay seems to be in these from the battlegrounds to the story quests and even world PVP seems restricted to dedicated hubs and not throughout each planet/zone.
All the gameplay feels so small scale and I never see more than two or three people througout the planets. I could see larger scale gameplay in Battlefield 3 and the two faction stations are the only populated social hub and because of that the game feels like Guild Wars or Diablo. I don't understand why they put the two faction stations in the game when we have the main cities for each faction.... just makes no sense. Now we just have giant cities with no one in them as a result.
As a result of all this I don't feel like the game is worth a subscription as where the gameplay takes place it just feels like a multiplayer game and not an MMO. I buy hats in TF2 every once in awhile when I play because that is fun, rewards me for putting my money down for funding the game and means I'm not locked into a subscription. I hate putting money down for a month and then ending up playing it for a day or two because it turned out I would actually be really busy. It just means whenever you want to play you have to keep paying for a month and it ends up costing alot of money. It would feel worth it if SWTOR felt less like a game and more like an online world where I want to spend time in.
What kept me in WoW until around the 1.6 patch was it felt like a proper world and world PVP was amazing. You'd have mass PVP at southshore and Tarren Mill and you'd have guilds who would patrol lowbie zones to protect then and city raids every weekend. It felt like a world and I would glady subscribe to because it offers that world feeling that multiplayer player games don't give. However once like 1.6 (I hope I remembered right) came out it let you enter battlegrounds without having to be outside them. So all of a sudden world PVP died even more than when battlegrounds were introduced. Suddenly it felt like a game and I could get that experience from any non subscription multiplayer game and I haven't been back since but come back trials to see it's even worse now.
SWTOR feels even worse than WoW, there is no world feel what so ever and everything is so gamey. There is no sense of travel, you just enter a loading screen from the station and suddenly you're there because you cannot even pilot your ship as space is another gamey on rails thing. People said it would get better once you get to later planets but it doesn't there are so many invisible walls and everywhere feels like a corridor. Tatooine you have to get Taxis everywhere or you get that Battlefield leaving the map thing or you die...
All my friends say the same thing, it isn't worth a subscription and they all feel like it's a worse WoW seven years later and were hoping it would be so much more cause Bioware were developing.
Comments
Personally I can deal with some intancing and zoning without it bothering me at all - LOTRO would be an example of that. in LOTRO all individual zones are instanced, along with some of the epic quests, dungeons and some buildings also. Vanguard was awesome with zero instancing of anything at all, but that's another story.
SWTOR - however, takes instancing to a whole new level. Not only does it have the instance types that I listed LOTRO as having, but it also has shards / instanced copies of each zone. PLUS, each zone often times even has separate mini zones that are instanced also BEYOND just for instanced quests (like Coruscant for example). It is just way way too much. I think the ultimate killer, however, is the copies / sharding of zones. No place ever felt busy when I was playing, and with the stale game world, you need players to make it feel alive.
tl;dr
Everyone has there own definition of MMO.
I've gone from wanting open world/seamless to wanting more instancing because the a$$hats in game. Yeah...you all spoiled it. You who ninja mobs, or resource nodes, or glowies....you're a plague on open world game play. So I'm done with you. Bring on more instancing.
Agree with OP.
All the way to lvl 50, i was meeting with max 5 ppl from my faction (Republic) in every map i was questing.
I also met 10-15 Empire in total.
Someone may like this. Not me anyway…
I almost wonder if you guys are on a private server or something (I know you are not btw). I see people from both factions running around all the time. Get really tired of people stealing mission objects that I had to make a really hard fight for too. This is about the easiest game I have played to team on. Never have a hard time and seldom have to resort to begging the Guild for help (except at the latest of hours). I would figure that I was actually the one with something weird going on, except that I am playing on three different servers and at least half the time during the worst hours and still no real problem. My guess is you made a bad choice in servers.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Well it's pretty much a worse WoW for me in terms of PvP but with a Star Wars KOTOR skin. The PvE is more like KOTOR with tons more quests and levels. Like if in KOTOR you could reach level 50 and play multiplayer. That's how I describe it currently.
In response to "Open world is ruined by PvE competition" I would say that is going to happen no matter what even in instances. It's just when it happens among friends, you laugh and think it's funny. When it happens with somebody you don't know it turns into an angry confrontation. I blame WoW for making this problem bigger than it ever was. In Dark Age of Camelot the only thing that ever happened rarely is a higher level would start griefing lower levels by following them around and diminishing their EXP greatly. You could submit a ticket and a GM would warn them to make them stop. Groups would sometimes fight over monster camps but there were always more monster camps to go to and people were really nice sometimes just like sometimes rude people would just come in and try to forcefully take a monster camp. The rule of politeness is to let people who have had a camp first alone. Again there were always other camps to go to. Edit: I would say that WoW blew this problem up bigger with the addition of clickable objects with respawn timers that come from quests. When all you have to deal with is just which monster camps do people share with other players, it becomes so much simpler!
You may still think persistent worlds just never work funwise. Maybe you just prefer instances and themeparks. But look how many games you have available at the moment if you are a fan of themeparks and instances. A lot. There is no problem here for you. You can go and play them. The market for non-instanced sandboxes with minor touches of themepark was back in the 90s and early 2000 and it only really lasted for maybe 4 years for me so you can understand why I want it back. This instanced themepark stuff has been going on a lot longer and there have been other games that are a lot like SWTOR that even came out in the 90s but just weren't 3D, as high quality, or as well known as a Star Wars game.
Ultima Online did not have a seamless world. Not for the mobs. You could cross that little boundary and then just dance around watching the mob stand there at the invisible boundary between you and them. Ultima Online was not an MMO. Now watch the universe collapse.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have to agree. I don't mind the instancing so much but the constant loading screens are killing this game for me.
haha i lol'd
people always seem to forget alot of stuff.
like Wow being even more buggy at release then swtor but oh well. we cant have that this day of age can we?
Nowhere is there a definition of what an MMO actually is. As humans we just feel this need to categorise everything into strict genres and that can sometimes be an error. EQ and WoW were MMOs, a fact everyone would agree with, yet they weren't seamless.
If anything it is the words that make up MMORPG that state what it should be in essence:
Massively
Multiplayer
Online
Role
Playing
Game
Star Wars is that, so it's an MMO like EQ and WoW.
Now if you wanted to further define the genre you could state games that are seamless and persistent MMOs. The game might not fit in there...that's a personal feeling.
Personally I wouldn't say it's not seamless. The worlds are seamless but the galaxy could not possibly be. TOR is also persistent, in that it's always there. The only time it's not is when there's downtime, and all MMOs have that.
.
Why don't you play singleplayer games with co-op then?, that's what you are saying right?
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
It was a seamless world but due to configuration of it you had "server lines" which mean you were literally moving from one server that controlled that area to another. That's what a GM told me in game when I asked about it, could be hogwash though
DAOC was a pretty seamless world, as was Warhammer but lets not talk about that.
Other than the generic 'This MMO doesn't suit my personal taste so it sucks!' we see countless times on this forum, I always laugh at 'world pvp in WoW'.
Blizzard never touched 'world pvp' in a negative way and promoted it heavily in their TBC expansion.
The fact is that the majority of players rejected 'world pvp' by not participating in them.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
You're creating a false expectation based on a personal definition. In doing so, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Based on my experience I'm guessing you are playing lots of warfronts. I'm yet to found a mmo where you can play instanced pvp without loading screens.
In any case that's what you chose to do. If you leveling like most people you will see one loadings screen each six or seven hours.
DAOC was a pretty seamless world, as was Warhammer but lets not talk about that.
If we're going to sit here and nitpick details, then we need to nitpick all the details. There are no MMORPG based on the nitpicky details that people want to use to justify their dislike of SWToR. Why can't people just say, "I don't like SWToR. I don't like to see loading screens at all."
And what are people doing that's causing constant load screens anyway? Are they logging in and out of the game repeatedly? Are they flying back and forth to the Empire/Republic fleets? What is it? Where are these constant loading screens?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
SW:TOR is massively multiplayer because...?
Just because you connect to the same central server does not make it massively multiplayer imo. If it was then Diablo would be as well. This game is much more instanced than EQ and WoW, as much as STO I would say, and it is to such an extent that it prevents massively numbers of people to interact in any meaningful way.
My gaming blog
And SW:TOR players are embracing world PvP?
My gaming blog
Dark Age of Camelot was seamless except for zoning into battlegrounds, dungeons, and the capital city but all of which were all persistent, aside from different servers. Most people are lenient about servers which is very important to note. They aren't all perfection obsessed. They have good reasons for their own personal feelings just like you have your own.
ok!you go visit china do you fell part of them ?nope yet it is on the same planet,now imagine a different planet!
i aint sure if everything is instanced to death,but from what i gather when it say pvp it is world wide area everybody have access to it so far as i know
But the zoning existed. "OMG THERE'S CONSTANT LOADING SCREENS DAOC ISN'T AN MMORPG!"
Nitpicking details based on personal opinions.
Which is fine. Right up until someone decides that their personal opinion is an objective fact and that everyone else needs to have the same opinion. There is a difference between saying, "SWToR is not an MMORPG because it has loading screens" and saying, "I really dislike loading screens, it makes SWToR not feel like an MMORPG".
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
OP
Maybe you need to play some games that are not MMOs to get a better idea of what is good or bad. SWTOR is most definitely an MMO and although you have had a negative experience it is because you had false expectations for the game. You have to pick a game that will interest your playstyle, not a popular one and expect them to fulfill your needs.
World PvP is a dead concept largely because it was always a dumb concept. PvP has continued to shrink in MMOs because people have started to realize that less people means more balanced. People are becoming more in favor of instancing/themeparking and smaller instanced PvP because that's more fun to them.
Some people love running around and exploring, I'm not one of them.
If you want a game where you can run around and explore, get Minecraft. There is a full 900 acre open space for you to explore... or build.
If you actually think world PvP is epic you are confusing what you want it to be with what it actually is. World PvP is mass PvP you geting one shot and getting angry... then logging out.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
In Everquest 2, I used to have multiple loading screens just while travelling within the capital city.
Can't recall people saying it wasn't an MMO due to that...
Dark Age of Camelot was seamless except for zoning into battlegrounds, dungeons, and the capital city but all of which were all persistent, aside from different servers. Most people are lenient about servers which is very important to note. They aren't all perfection obsessed. They have good reasons for their own personal feelings just like you have your own.
But the zoning existed. "OMG THERE'S CONSTANT LOADING SCREENS DAOC ISN'T AN MMORPG!"
Nitpicking details based on personal opinions.
Which is fine. Right up until someone decides that their personal opinion is an objective fact and that everyone else needs to have the same opinion. There is a difference between saying, "SWToR is not an MMORPG because it has loading screens" and saying, "I really dislike loading screens, it makes SWToR not feel like an MMORPG".
The OP said "I feel" many times throughout their post. Not seeing where they claimed their word was the truth.
No actually it doesn't = a persistant world but I prefer a persistant world over other types of mmo . Having said that it doesn't stop me enjoying the ones that arn't .
The problem for StarWars it could never be a persistant world and be StarWars .
Think about it how are you going to walk from Hoth to Tatooine .
What I think they should have done to make it feel more like a persistant world was to have a better thought out Space combat system . Perhaps random pve skirmishes when traveling from one place to another or the possibility to engage in pvp in open space .
They needn't have gone into the sort of detail EVE has but they could have looked at that and single player space combat mmos and looked into what the options they had for implimenting something similar .
Please note even though I am being critical here I still think this is a pretty decent mmo and worth a look if you havn't tried it yet . Theres just some things I thought they would have considered given thier budget .
Dark Age of Camelot was seamless except for zoning into battlegrounds, dungeons, and the capital city but all of which were all persistent, aside from different servers. Most people are lenient about servers which is very important to note. They aren't all perfection obsessed. They have good reasons for their own personal feelings just like you have your own.
But the zoning existed. "OMG THERE'S CONSTANT LOADING SCREENS DAOC ISN'T AN MMORPG!"
Nitpicking details based on personal opinions.
Which is fine. Right up until someone decides that their personal opinion is an objective fact and that everyone else needs to have the same opinion. There is a difference between saying, "SWToR is not an MMORPG because it has loading screens" and saying, "I really dislike loading screens, it makes SWToR not feel like an MMORPG".
The OP said "I feel" many times throughout their post. Not seeing where they claimed their word was the truth.
I may have created my own thread based on what was implied by the OPs thread title.
:-)
It was early and I hadn't finished my coffee.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.