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SWTOR Fallen Empires REALLY Needs A Bigger Game World
ImperatorBellus
Member UncommonPosts: 35
I used to play SWTOR but I quit it early and only finished the first planet as a Jedi Guardian, I wanted to dedicate more time to playing Planetside 2 and Star Trek Online and playing 3 MMO's at once is difficult, for me, I would have to neglect one.
Anyway, what contributed a lot for me to stop playing is the game world it self, it is way too small by todays MMO standards. Vanilla WoW itself had 45 Zones to explore. SWTOR has 21 planets, half of those planets only being the size of 1 medium-large sized wow Zone. Overall, SWTOR is only about the size of 31.5-38 of vanilla wow's zones total.
What Fallen Empire needs is less planets, perhaps only 4-5 and much larger game worlds. Each planet should have 10 different large zones to explore. This is all only wishful thinking of the game I want it to be and sadly, none of this will ever happen. I am pretty sure we will see the same old small zoned planets that we have seen in SWTOR. All the new world content should also have world pvp if it is a pvp server.
Is there any information about any new planets yet?
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if you have only seen the starter planet (Tython) you have seen not much of the game. Later planets are a LOT bigger.
The problem is not so much world size, rather what´s (not) in it, just doesn´t feel immersive without day night cycles, relatively static mobs standing around, and the dated graphics engine doesn´t have many bells and whistles compared to newer titles like Wildstar or GW2.
Also you can´t swim, it´s a universe of knee deep water which is really a major drawback.
SWTOR should have expanded the existing planets instead of adding smaller new ones, for example I´d love to see new content and high level zones added for Tattooine, Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant and other iconic better known planets.
Though it is not going to happen, I have a shred of hope that Fallen Empires will bring a new engine. It is the perfect opportunity to do so, it is already going to let new characters start at 60, and the old content will be inaccessable (my understanding at least). A better engine would take care of a lot of my gripes with this game, including weird performance issues, day/night cycles, better draw distance, more active (and just plain more) NPCs, etc.
This game has a lot going for it with awesome music, the best possible setting, another Star Wars movie coming out, fully voiced quests, and epic stories. The classes are genuinely fun to play. This stupid engine is kicking the game in the balls... though it is quite possible that much of what I consider "engine" problems is actually just lazy and inexperienced devs.
They spoke about revisiting old locations in the expansion, so I imagine our missions might take us to new areas on those worlds. (Or maybe it'll be a different version of the planet)
I suspect we may also visit on (or more) of episode VII's planets, since they mentioned being in contact with J.J.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
If they did a FFXIV esq reboot, it could be huge. But I don't see that happening...
They would be better off just launching a new mmo, especially since swtor's been out for around 3 years now.
Swtor has many problems, and their traveling system and planets are one of the major issues.
Traveling is an annoyance, because they make you zone multiple times just to get anywhere. They tried eliminating this, with shorter cooldowns on fleet passes and the quick travel skill, but it still wasn't enough.
The planets are tied into this also, because they are basically instances. They should have let people get in their ship, then travel automatically to planets, sort of like a flight path in WoW, except it could've sped up the process with warp speed or whatever. It would've been more immersive.
With every minute you spend logged in you make the very thing you want unlikely. Why should they add anything to the world when the focus on story has just been confirmed for this expansion? Arguably they did the story well in every example, but the meta comparison between the instanced low player count cinema bits always show the comparatively pointless worlds for what they are.
If they were to build bigger worlds they would need to make those areas relevant. To do that you would have to add decent loot on different tables to mobs. You would need to change the way the world is populated, and introduce reasons to actually care about the real estate. Furthermore you would need more terrain with better access for players (jetpack, etc.)
There is a lot of dead space in SWTOR that could be utilized, but I don't think they will do anything to make that happen.
FFXIV had a reboot because 1.0 was a horrid PoS. SWTOR is a great mmo and is making Bioware/EA a ton of money. There is literally no reason to do this lol. They would be better off just making a brand new mmo called SWTOR 2.
At the very least they could, and they should, upgrade the engine to DX11/DX12 64 bit.
This would allow for significant performance and graphics improvements over their DX9 32 bit client.
Executive Editor (Games) http://www.wccftech.com
I'm not trying to argue, but just a sincere question. Is this option even available for them? If yes, have they given any reason why they wouldn't do this?
The problem is heavy story and large worlds is a hard combination to get right, as you get further along in TOR you really start to feel this as planets get bigger.. it often makes what would otherwise be a tight concise adventure feel disjointed, it completely ruins the pacing of said stories. That is the biggest problem I see with Bioware's signature formula being placed in an MMO format. It becomes a matter of adding more for the sake of more, as that's what people expect in an MMO. The end result is a lesser product than it could have been, I feel it would be even worse if they tried to go "bigger".
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"I only saw the starter area for two classes and decided the game is too small."
They're all that small, and the new ones will be even smaller.
SWTOR is horrible and you shouldn't ever play it again.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
I had some major problems with this game in the past.
1) Planets seemed too big and underused as a whole (too much area and not enough quests covering said areas). Barely saw anyone out in the wilderness because of this. This also made it so you rarely so PvP in the world, since your opponents had an equally large side of the planet.
2) No day / night
3) 99% of the mobs were standing still, with the rare elite just roaming.
4) Travel time
5) The massive gaps in levels to be able to continue the story.
6) End game was horrible at the start
7) They didn't focus on story after the initial bit, but are starting to rectify that.
They are making changes for the good, but most of those will likely remain.
There is a lot swtor should be doing.
for example creating landscapes with valleys and seeing the whole area to truly see the art. Sure not every place is a valley, or a cliff, or a mountain, but to not have a view of the landscape takes away from the art and even immersion. As it is, even the draw distance is bad which hurts the idea of extending that landscape appeal. By draw distance I mean that radius but not all the way to the horizon, since the backdrop is fine, but seeing detail when out of the draw distance the game looks bad.
with that being said for zone art, I feel adding more area km^2 is not something on the high priority list for me. I want more aliens, more different landscape, more datacrons etc but that doesn't mean to make the world too big. Since the old adage of quality vs quantity.
what are they going to fill those huge worlds with?
im hoping for an mmo that only has story for single or casual grouping content, but everything else are coop gameplay that is dynamic with some mini game mechanics. Throw in some new landscape, lore and npcs with once movement and politics and there is a breathing and alive world beyond the cinematic experience.
so, I'm being cautious in wanting huge lands since that results in more side questing which means development is spent on something I personally do not enjoy.
im only stating my preference, and if by chance you or the majority like side questing, then who am I to get in the way of the masses? At least there are options to avoid that side questing content but it still affects the possibility of developers investing in something i would/could enjoy more.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
They can't just push a button and automatically get DX11, and DX12 is a totally different animal from the previous versions. They would have to go in and redo their API in order to do that. It is not about DX version, FFXIV is on DX9 as well as GW2 and PS2 look how they turned out. If it was built like a turd and runs like a turd, upgrading DirectX will not make it look or perform any better.
You only saw the first planet, later zones are ridiculously large.
You can literally spend hours just walking across Hoth or Tatooine; they are MUCH larger than your traditional WoW zone.
Sure new planets would be cool, but first and foremost they need to do more with the content they have and give incentives for even higher level players to go back there. Plus get rid of the godawful fleet capital.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Not quite true, FFXIV;ARR does support DX11, if you have a system that can use it, when you launch the game (FFXIV;ARR) it shows which version you are running on the 'play' button, i think you have to select DX11 in the options, and are you so very sure that GW2 also does not support DX11?