Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The small things which drag down an otherwise good game
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Before you chime in calling me hater: I still enjoy SWTOR, and so far I can say, I didn't have so much fun with a MMO for many years! Despite that, after roughly 3 weeks, I can see how SWTOR is just severly lacking in what most would call "small things", part of which confirm my initial fears I have had for years, since I followed the development of SWTOR. While I have fun now, I can already see that this game will be in serious trouble in a year, latest.
Bioware has put ALL on the trump card of story, at the almost total neglectance of everything else. You guys know I have been in virtually every MMO of the last 5 years, and what puzzles me every single time is: how MMO developers ALWAYS act as if they would make the first MMO that ever existed! It is a fact that NONE of them EVER seems to learn of the succesful and failed elements of other MMOs. Why they totally seem to ignore that is beyond me. Most of the previous MMOs had one or two really great things, and the rest was mediocre or bad. And in this, SWTOR is just the same story again. Not a single succesful thing from previous MMOs was taken on. The rich visual design of LOTRO, the strong combat of AoC & TR, entertainers & crafting from SWG, dynamic content from Rift, Public Quests from WAR, 3 faction PVP from DAoC, social hub design and cutesy factor from WOW - NONE of these very popular things were ever taken into new MMOs. It was as if the developers lived on their isolated islands and never ever looked at another MMO. SWTOR is the same story here.
1) Cute and fun
There are no Gungangs and no Ewoks. And you can yell at me a 1000 times, it is a mistake. You see, what made the old movie trilogy great was, it had humor. Han and Leia bickering, Ewoks babbling. I recall when Mark Hammil saw the new Star Wars I, his reaction was: "God, is this serious now." Bingo. Serious. This is, a bit over ephasized, a typical men's game. Serious. Grey. Where is the weird fun, the quirky characters? Where is the female touch? An old German saying goes: A man can built a house, but only a woman makes a home. And SWTOR is just a house. I am sorry of some feel this is not political correct when I say SWTOR lacks a female touch. All is heroic, all is like made of steel, but so devoid of feeling, of soul, of heart! Take the quest on Tython, where you save a baby animal. You don't see any cute scene of that baby animal, just a line "oh, it is safe now" end of story. This is so symptomatic of what this game lacks. Heart.
You can bash me as you want, but THAT is where WOW was great. It had funny, quirky, weird, cute characters and quests. I lost my pirate hat, harr harr; make my pie for me; go to the Stormwind kindergarden and help the kids have a fun time. Here, all is heroic and serious and manly. I am not at home in this world. I am a drifter. Send from heroic crisis A to B to C. I do not LIVE in this world, I do heroic missions in a museum. Ok, I exagerate. But not so much. This is where you see this game was only made by men, or mainly by men, for the heroic action young male audience. I can't imagine to make this world my home the way I made SWG, EQ2, WOW and LOTRO my homes for several years.
2) Social Hub gone wrong
Making a good social hub is one of the make or break in any MMO, and BOY did they make it wrong. THE social hub the designers made is a space station. That is per se a very cold, rational and unemotional thing. It is a functional place in space with as much life as a mummy. Was there EVER a more boring and sterile cantina than this station? You CAN make a space station feel alife, but then make it look like Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5! But THIS is a horrible social hub with ZERO feeling. And all those cities, Coruscant, Anchorhead... they are, alas, not working. Already people spread thin over those giant places. Just comparing how "at home" I felt in Mos Eisley (SWG), Qeynos (EQ2) or Stormwind (WOW) for many years and how homeless, drifting and alone I feel in every SWTOR city!
For one: those cities are WAY too big. People are spread thin all over. I never have this feeling of "meet and greet", like on Stormwind marketplace or Goldshire. Or Qeynos Harbour! Or the old Mos Eisley in SWG. Those cities always were so alife! Stormwind was so animated. It felt llike a real, living place. With kids playing chase, a bread seller walking by, guards exchanged, and the design was small, so people felt like it was full of players. Here in SWTOR, in those huge houses and giant cities, player hurry from story NPC to story NPC. I never saw people talk in a place or gather or anything that remotely reminds me of a social life.
I must just repeat after a while, I see clearly how the TOTAL lack of ANY non-story more sandbox elements will break this game in the long run. In WOW & LOTRO and spent a considerable time just fishing. And it was fun! Did I get a new fish, or just seaweed, or a weird relic?? Sometimes I got a super fish in LOTRO and I could let it prepared and hung on my wall in my house! There was a fishing contest at spring holiday! Or at Christmas, my Halfelf Paladin was wearing a funny santa cap, and I made snowball battles with my guildmates!
And sorry, but the lack of "character" in the character creation just bugs me. Somehow all look so... smooth. So lacking character. It reminds me of the "progress" from City of Heroes to Champions Online. Sure, in City of Heroes there were only simplistic, premade faces. But they had CHARACTER, they had soul! I felt unique with them. Then came Champions Online and DCU, and yes they had a ton more polygons. But, damn, their faces had WAY less character! It's the same with SWTOR. Yes, the faces and bodies are way more detailled. But the old Everquest II chars had 100 times more soul! I still remember my shady looking, cute Ratonga; or my serious Halfelf; or how my Sarnath was stomping through the world; or most of all my lovely Fae man with his cute blue wings, and how I always had a whip as off hand weapon just because I loved how the whip was swirling behind him when he way flying or jumping, and how funny he looked with a blue cape and tiny shoes. I just loved such funny little details, because they gave my characters individuality. Bioware may tell me the greatest stories ever. But in the end, I was at home with my EQ2 chars, my WOW chars, my SWG chars. With SWTOR... I just can't imagine that. I can't even 100% say why. But somehow soul, emotion and character is what this game just lacks. Every time the story VO ends, there isn't much to look at. None of the forests has the magic of the LOTRO forests, like the Old Forest I felt spooked in, or the Moors where I felt like in a Moor, or the snow peaked mountains, where I always felt like I needed to put a blanked over me! neither the forest of Tython nor the meadows of Alderaan *feel*. I can't 100% say why. Part is, the places are so...silent. I feel often like I am more in a museum like in a world. Or how I always smiled in LOTRO, when some 3 or 4 people made a band with the ingame music system and played a tune!
I know you'll say that is haters speaking or what, and I still enjoy the stories, like a really great book. But I feel EXACTLY like reading a really great book. I follow the lines someone has drawn. I am sent from A to B to C like a puppet through an elaborate stage. I never feel like I am in a living, breathing world where *I* explore as I want. Either the Jedi Masters send me or the Sith Lord or whoever. And once the book is finished, I will have had fun with the book. But I fear I won't ever be "at home" in this game in the sense of a world, as I desire a MMO to feel. And I REALLY can't believe Bioware can turn this around. Not because they could not, but because, like all previous companies, they wills stick to their "vision" to the bitter end. As all companies before, entirely blind to the basic errors. *sigh* And I REALLY wish this game would have made a difference.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Brilliant post!
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
____________________________
Good post. My only disagreement with you would be the Gungan and Ewok thing. Please God, no Gungans. Ewoks I could maybe handle, particularly if it came with Endor as a new planet, but for the love of everything holy, no Gungans!
Besides, we have Jawas. Doesn't get any cuter than that, right?
Also agree about the social stuff. Need more of it, need to make Cantinas more popular through mini-games and such, and need to be able to sit in chairs at the very least.
But no Gungans!
Good post. The only thing I would change is that these things (IMO) are not small, but major. Point 1 is personal preference, but the stuff you talk about in point 2 is what defines a virtual world. And since MMORPGs are largely about a persistent virtual world, I see them as very important.
SWTOR has a decent enough story, but I have a few SPRPGs I have yet to complete that I feel are a much better story driven experience (Xenoblade to name one). And once you look past the story, there really isn't anything that makes SWTOR special, it's just a generic MMORPG with a fairly lifeless world. So if you enjoy the story, great. But if you're not really interested in it, then I don't think SWTOR has much to offer.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I do see your points and to some that might be an issue I personally like it this way . I am tired of the cute rounded little buildings and huts I am tired of the quaint little shires . I am tired of the pony mounts and the flying dragon mounts . I am tired of the social hub being a fountain or AH in an annoyingly cartoonish Faction city. I am glad it is dark impersonal and cold its the way I see that world . To each there own though right .
Project rips a wall of text out of the ground, Upheaval procs Project rips another wall of text out of the ground
Project crits you for 15K damage.... GG
Long posts are good when there are lots of points to make.
1) ToR has more comic reliefs than most games out there including WoW and they dont end with npc names ala harris pilton... And no i dont want to see any jar jars out there i want to re-enact the kiss the pavement scene from america x every time i see a guild name like meesaaa pew pew or meessso jedi or jar jar blinks or any other dumb refernce to faux wars episode 1-3.
2) Hmm i dont remeber the last time i've seen a social hub in a game ever, heck EQ1 didnt had any social hubs, social hubs form on RP servers on their own pace and in their own location. Other than that there is no need for social hubs in an MMO today, this is not a "social" game this is a cooperative and or competetive game, some hubs will naturally emerge when they add mini games like pazzak and swoop racing to the game, but other than i had enough of naked Goldshiers to last me a life time.... I never got RP's even tho i made several chars on RP server mostly just to make fun of other RP's while RPing, me and my gf made 2 rogues name bonnie and clyde several times on diffrent RP servers and i've trolled the RP's while she yelled at me both in game and out of it to stop being an ass.
Other than that i never had "meet" and "greet" i've hated lagforge during vanilla and quite disliked SW after the AH unification patch. I usually log out in some remote inn to not be bothered by instant spam from gold famers and having to go trough 5000 naked levle 1 bankalts to get to my mail box. That said ToR has 1000 times more reasons to go to the "hub" AKA the fleet than WoW has had since the meeting stones were interduced.... not to mention since the instant LFG que system was added. ToR requires you to actually get back to the fleet if you want to group or allows you to group up on a planet and use the FP shuttle but that is usually much harder to accomplish than building a group on the fleet.
Elikal, you are incapable of hate, so this is not a hate post, it sounds like a post made by a concerned player that sees a lot of potential in a game and really wishes it to be a great game. Thanks for sharing your views and feelings on the game. I am sure Bioware is listening, I think they just need to get their MMO feet, because clearly the MMO ship they sailed on was not the good ship MMO many people were hoping it would be. I think she needs a little more time in dry dock.
Anyway, thanks for another insightful read. You always deliver.
I think Elikal's point number 1 was a point of preference. So like you say, YMMV.
But his point number 2 was pretty much objective. It's not that the social hub in SWTOR is not "cartoony" it's that it's completely bland and uninteresting. It literally looks like something built by the government for minimum dollar. There is no real style at all in the space station, it's completely generic.
They could still have the "cold" style that you like while making it more interesting. I thought Dromund Kass was fairly interesting, but it's not a social hub. It's just a quest city like Lakeshire or Duskwood in WoW.
And that's the problem. The game HAS cities. But they aren't social hubs, they are just quest hubs that you go to during the course of leveling. The only social hub is an incredibly boring space station, with vendors lined up in the most efficient manner possible.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
The ewoks and the gungans don't actually represent the humor of Star Wars, they represent Lucas' attempts at merchandising to kids. The humor was in the main chars being funny sometimes, not having the funniness shifted off onto supporting constructs whose sole objective is to be cute/funny.
Okay I read only up to the highlighted text and then just HAD TO REPLY before reading more.
WTF are you talking about that no MMORPGs have social hubs?? And then you bring up EQ as one that didn't have social hubs...EQ!!!!! Did you ever go to East Commons????
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Its a milliatry space station ofc it was build by the lowest bidder who won the contract :P
The "spartan" design of the fleet is much more realistic than some grand monument to what ever, which will especially will never fit the republic way of doing things. curoscant is way diffrent than dromund kass it has no huge flags or monuments because the republic is not as mono-centric as the empire is. As the game progresses i belive that some hubs will naturally form, during the beta where there were still AH's in every city(which were unlinked at the time) IF was formed as the social hub of WoW because of its proximity to the high level zones and the ship travel to the other continent, because the other cities were not used Blizzard removed the AH's from the other capitals. The same thing was with Ogrimmar, it was close to ashzara and Onyxia, and was not a hell hole to get too and wallk around like Undercity...
Social hubs where people log off and on because they are close to X Y Z yes, social hubs where people went there for any other reason no.
Social hubs are nothing more than a "luxury" or force of habit due to the structure of the game, so i dont call them social hubs because to me there are nothing social about them. From my exprience only social aspect of the game is in chat or on vent or in the same room as i usually play with 1-3 other people around me....
Good post, I don't share the same idea's on where focus should be given, but I'd like to see these changes for those who do. My biggest concern right now is world PVP, that's where I want to see a lot of focus from the development team.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Like I said, did you ever go to East Commons? There were like hundreds of trade messages going on there an hour. Trade...that's social no? People would also just hang around and chat as well.
UO had great social hubs too. I remember the bank roof at Moonglow always had a bunch of folks on it. And the player created towns were even more social.
I mean, you can choose to act as if social hubs don't exist, but that doesn't make them less real.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I don't think we're saying that the space station isn't realistic...we're saying that it's BORING
.
And hey, the space station will be a social hub for the same reason that you give for Orgrimmar and Ironforge being social hubs. It's the center of everything. The flashpoints are there, PvP dailies, access to just about anywhere...
But at least in WoW, Ironforge and Orgrimmar were relatively interesting places that you would want to hang out at. In SWTOR the social hub is incredibly bland.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Great post, one of the few long ones that I actually took the time to read. I couldn't agree more, I enjoy the game but it's definitely lacking the character and charm that can make us smile or just stop for a moment to take in the environment.
so i bought the game the other day (darn peer pressure) and i must say i have gone from hater to ... meh its not bad. now mind you i am only level 15 powertech ...
grouping has been pretty fun .... though i wish there was a bit more incentive to group up
the story is very well done ... though i wish my responses were a bit more impactful
I still wish they did not put so much effort into the voice overs and spent more time on other content options. like Rifts er rifts and invasions or Warhammers PQs.
Actually in EQ there was Plane of Knowledge. Before that folks met up on the moon, and before that places like the East Common tunnels due to the trading going on. Folks could make a ton of Plats back in those days, as you had to camp there to know prices.
As far as OP....Fuck Ewoks and Jar Jars. Shit like that ruined SWs. Ep 4 and 5 were the best made, and didnt have them featured.
Day/night cycle, with changing Mob tables would of been nice. Wouldnt mind a few more roaming/randomly moving Mobs, and all NPCS should of been targetable, even if you couldnt kill them.
Other than that, not really much I would change. Now UI discussion is a whole nother topic. I also wish we had a shared bank slot as well, although I suppose being able to mail stuff is as close as we are going to get.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
/Trade is pretty much undeeded when there is an AH/Trade Broker system in the game, and no it is not "social" just as i dont see going to the store as social while i see going to a pub is. To me running a raid/ops, an instance or just leveling with friends is to social activity, spam hubs TO ME, are and will be just a nuisance i have to avoid or deal with and nothing more...
UO is a very diffrent game it is a user-generated-content sandbox game, ofc it will have "social" hubs it is more like 2nd life than WoW.
To highlighted text: Just LOL
UO had user generated content sure...but all you could do is place and decorate houses...that was it. UO was very much an RPG about killing mobs, getting treasure, and fighting other players. And really, if there was anything that made social hubs so important in UO, it was the lack of chat channels.
Nowadays, social hubs are just the zone where most people are so you reach a lot of people in general chat. Chat...hmmm...social right? In WoW, these were Ironforge and Orgrimmar.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Very good post actually,
Only thing im not sure of if in the time period ewoks were around?
Maybe they are the off spring of a wookie and a jawa?
But anyway merited concern's
It's one of the things that just baffle me. PQ in WAR and invasions in Rift were SO succesful, I thought they would become a new standard of "must have", at least in some form. Invasions really elevated Rift beyond anything I had seen before, same PQ in War.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Social hubs ?
Eq2 - parts of each city, on my server qeynos harbor and willow wood were hangouts ( as well as the crafting areas ). In freeport the dark elf starting area was quite the place !
Swg - cantinas everywhere, especially mos eisely ( go figure hehe ) and player cities. Coming up on a player city and chatting up the locals when I was on a BH mission was good fun !
Vanguard - currently Veskels and tanvu are both big hangout for all levels crafting and the like although back in the day Leth Nure was my hub, or Khal.
DDO - Marketplace bank ( in front of ) is pretty happening aslo the harbor area ( between bank and AH ) easy access to ship there and there are many folks hanging out there daily
WoW - Org / undercity / stormwind / ironforge
That said, what i liked about the above games is a diversity of areas to "hang out in" these games were not "lobby games" akin to the old "Microsoft gaming zone" or FPS lobbies .... which it seems many an MMO are now nearly replicating
^__^
Thanks. I hope they listen. SWTOR deserves to be improved. But I haven't yet seen such change in a previous MMO, so I am kinda anxious they focus on just "more of the same".
@ALL: It doesn't HAVE to be Ewoks or Gungans. Though I never understood the hate. I thought they were funny. *shrug* But maybe it's because I am a child. XD I think Wookiees and Rodians can also be "funny"/nice/kind/cheerful.
I mean, don't you ever feel at some point you need some harmless comic relief? That "ok ENOUGH drama and seriousness" in SWTOR? After playing Sith Warrior 8 hours straight I swear I had nightmares about Sith evils!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
PQ and Invasions were abandond shortly afterlaunch, Blizz removed world bosses from WoW too, either too many people complained or no-one was doing them any more... Today the one thing you have to have in a game is content on demand, just like i dont watch TV any more but use the VOD services from my cable company or a provider like hulu to get my shows. It's faster, easier, and much less annoying... oh and you don't have to "play" on their schedule.
Instanced content, and more important "Instant" content glued with flashy game mechanics that will keep people intrested while leveling and will stay fresh enough to enable them to level additional chars are more important than any other gimmic like rift's and PQ's. And yes i loved rifts, for the first 3 weeks chasing them in groups spwaning a raid boss, and what do you now? a month and a half after launch no one was doing them, if you started a new char you could only do the soloable rifts and nothing more... every thing else would be out of reach because even if there were players in the same zone they could not care less because they've seen them all before, they dont give enough rewards, and they take too long to complete.
I agree.
My thoughts on PQ's and Rifts were that, while a bit repetitive and still flawed, actually brought a really good "MMO" feel to the game. When a big invasion happens in Rift, tons of players drop what they're doing and band together to fend off the bad guys. It really helped break the monotony of the quest grind. But like I said, they had flaws. Rift events and PQ's were both pretty "boilerplate" in that once you do one, the rest will seem very similar.
That said, I really think that this concept of the public quest could be something really great. Just imagine in SWTOR if you're just grinding away quests on Dromund Kass and all of a sudden you hear "A Republic raid has been detected at the lightning towers! All available assets are required to defend the towers!" Then you could try to defend the towers from republic soldiers. Heck, they could even let republic players of appropriate leveling participate in the raid and try to capture the towers for some good open-world PvP on PvP servers.
It would have just made the world feel so much more alive. Everything is just so static.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?