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.
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????
You see what's wrong here right? You and the OP are like "the swtor social hub is too cold and utilitarian.. no depth etc" yet you are saying that the east commons was a good example of a social hub...
The social hub part of EC was a flipping tunnel with some torches... please in the name of all that is good: reference a better example.
I don't know if it's just the Bioware transition to making an MMO or maybe a sign that the game needed more development time, but it's lacking in these areas and more, with all the failings, big and small, dragging down what has the foundations of being a good MMORPG.
I really do think development time plays into all this, with a lot of details, big and small, being skipped because they just wouldn't have had time to do them all. I also wonder about the role of some of the Lucas Arts people in all this as well. It seems they micromanaged more than we realize and I can't help but wonder if that didn't hamstring the creative process more than a little.
Even the lack of polish is becoming obvious, with many little bugs that amount to ongoing annoyance, bugs that never should have made it into a retail release and should have been fixed via the patch process by now.
I think they got the story part of the game right, for the most part, with the exception as noted in the OP being the serious lack of any sense of wit or humor. The rest of the game does clearly lack any "soul". World design is technically sound, but lacking in personality. You never stop, look around and just say "wow". I didn't really realize this until now, but when I play MMOs, I'm usually filling my screenshot folder with virtual postcards from the game. I haven't taken a single screen shot since the beginning of Early Access.
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.
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????
You see what's wrong here right? You and the OP are like "the swtor social hub is too cold and utilitarian.. no depth etc" yet you are saying that the east commons was a good example of a social hub...
The social hub part of EC was a flipping tunnel with some torches... please in the name of all that is good: reference a better example.
Everquest was also released in 1999 . SWTOR was released 12 years later, so yeah I expect better.
I think the OP reflects my own sentiments precisely in that I think the game has no heart.
Regarding social hubs, I started playing EQ around the Planes of Power era when the social hub was essentially the Plane of Knowledge because if you wanted to travel anywhere, it was so easy to go via that zone. High level players would buff you there (buffs which could last for hours btw) and while waiting for groups to form you would use the ooc zonewide chat channel to talk about anything and everything. It was also a major area for crafters and quests. I spent many hours in that zone, often doing nothing but listening to chat.
Nowadays everything is handed on a plate to players. There is no reason to hang around waiting for groups (most things are soloable in many games). Auction houses negate the need for player-to-player trading. LFG tools negate the need to actually find your own groups. Buffs now only last mere minutes and in a lot of cases cannot be cast on players outside your group. Everything is so fast paced, no-one needs to wait for anything...
...therefore no-one needs to socialise with anyone.
There seems to be a lot of discussion about social areas on this thread so I'll start there. In almost every other MMO out there the social areas evolved naturally through the players. EC wasn't designed to be a common area in EQ but that's where the players began to congregate and it took off from there. Complaining that the devs didn't make a socnal gathering spot is a little moot. The game isn't even a month old. Social areas will naturally develop as the game matures and people start hanging out in certain areas. As far as the PQs go, I agree, I think TOR could benefit greatly from some sort of "open content". I have faith in bioware and I would be surprised if the weren't working on something like that to go with a future content update. This game has been in development for a very long time and many things have changed in MMOs since it started. If they tried to add every new thing from other mmos it would never come out. All I'm saying is be patient and see what happens.
I think the design of a social hub is one of the crucial things that can make or break a MMO in the long run. Champions Online even redesigned their central plaza to make it more comfy feeling.
One of the things in WOW were: you could always come to Stormwind/Ogrimar and be "at home". You always met people chatting, roleplaying, standing there. Those cities had a warm atmosphere of hospitality, and they were animted with city life. It was, despite the simplistic graphics, a believable designed city. Attracting players to a hub need two things.
a) The place must feel "warm", it must feel like a home you somehow feel good. Like Mos Eisley. Like Qeynos in EQ2, like Bree in LOTRO, like Stormwind in WOW. Those places had atmosphere, something to feel homely. A place with a positive aura, a feel good place.
b) It must have unique functions. It has the ONLY galaxy-wide Auction House. It has a cantina, right in front of it. It has some unique vendors asf. In Stormwind you have THE Auction House and a market place and some vendors all in a very small area, so people naturally meet there all the time. It was in a low level area, of course.
The issue with SWTOR is: it is WAY too big. People will feel lost. And who is going to declare the social hub? After what concepts? No, such things need careful planning. Bioware planned the space station and for many reasons that was a HORRIBLE idea. No one will ever feel "at home" in this space station.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I am having fun playing at the moment, but I'm taking it as single player rpg with possibilities for group interaction. I will play out as many storylines as I want to, then I will see if I still want to play in endgame. I don't know what endgame is as my highest char is lvl 22.
I was hoping that by the time I get to 50, there will be a great convergence....a great hub or city where everyone can gather and that's where the real world of the mmorpg begins. I was hoping that the path to 50 was just our individual story lines taking us to that world that will exist at endgame.
OP, what level have you made so far? Has anyone here made 50? Is there a world?
I am having fun playing at the moment, but I'm taking it as single player rpg with possibilities for group interaction. I will play out as many storylines as I want to, then I will see if I still want to play in endgame. I don't know what endgame is as my highest char is lvl 22.
I was hoping that by the time I get to 50, there will be a great convergence....a great hub or city where everyone can gather and that's where the real world of the mmorpg begins. I was hoping that the path to 50 was just our individual story lines taking us to that world that will exist at endgame.
OP, what level have you made so far? Has anyone here made 50? Is there a world?
Since I play several chars, my highest in Jedi Knight 34 only. I do not want to rush it. So I also play Jedi Sage, Sith Inq. and experimented a bit with other classes up to lv. 20.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
My hope is that the small things will come with time. I would love to see more mini games and more actual activities on the fleet.
I loved your reference to DS9 when talking about the station. That place felt very lively, even though we rarely saw much of the station itself.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the fleet. One area I see that has promise is the fact that there are already other ships on the fleet you can go to.
You are almost to the level where you go to instances that start on other ships in the fleet. You get to fly a little shuttle from the station to these other ships. There are vendors and trainers on the other ships. It's actually pretty cool.
I could see them adding more stations or places to go within the fleet that could make it better.
Unfortunately, for me, these little things are big things so I don't share your affection for the game. That said, it's nice to see someone who enjoys the game but has the same concerns as I do.
Makes me feel validated :]
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
The game was clearly designed by focus groups with clipboards.
They have taken every safe step and all the guaranteed working components from other MMOs and bolted them together.
I have got to level 27 since early access, playing just one character. I'm a Guildmaster and try not to skip much of the cutscenes. I check out all the content that's available to me.
I see so many level 50s though, which is odd as after playing over 3 hours last night i gained one level - with fully rested xp - and questing non stop. Some mad grinders come over from WoW here i think, all of them. And that's just fact, there was nothing available to me to gain faster levels other than maybe grinding elites, which i am sure everyone else does.
But then all i see is 50's in warzones and driving round the space station, with nothing to do. All in the highest tear PvP gear, fully kitted out. The armount of warzones they must do. Soon the wall will hit.
More to the point, agree with OP there, lifeless, i can't find a group for anything, there is no need to group for anything, over 90% of the guild have stopped logging on, no chat, no trade, mindless and complete FPS style PvP.
Single Player RPG with group zones. They made that other game like that, can't remember name. Anyway, unless they churn out new and unique content like drones, there's no community here to keep anyone playing past 6 months, shoot me down if i'm proven wrong, but i'm seeing boredom already in everyone i speak to.
Well after a game launches the dev team usually splits up. Some works on the live game with bugfixes, some works with adding features and content, and some are working on the next expansion. Since i have experienced very little bugs in this game. I sure hope they are working hard to add features and content to the live game.
The game is great and i enjoy it very much. But that fourth pillar, the story. Needs to take a backseat for a while. Now they need to build and add to the other aspects of an MMORPG. And i feel that exploring and random grouping in the wilderness is severly lacking. I just love to go to a unknown place, hunting, gathering, killing rare creatures or beeings. And if i can make a few credits and/or deal a blow to enemy in the prosess, even better.....
Hauken Stormchaser I want pre-CU back Station.com : We got your game Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!
Hitting 50 tomorrow...........couldnt agree more with the op.
The game is literally lacking soul. It's almost as if none of the leadership at BW is inspired anymore. It's really obvious in DA2 but even more so in SWTOR. Sad I really like some of BW games.
Hitting 50 tomorrow...........couldnt agree more with the op.
The game is literally lacking soul. It's almost as if none of the leadership at BW is inspired anymore. It's really obvious in DA2 but even more so in SWTOR. Sad I really like some of BW games.
To be fair to BW, the SW franchise is "mostly that way". The Jedi polish halos for a living. The Sith eat kittens for breakfast.
The first 3 SW movies weren't really about Jedi/Sith so much as the characters. The prequels were about Jedi/Sith and were rather more boring - "I'm good, you're evil, lets fight!", and the worlds were also rather more bland .
Anyway, to make SWTOR "more amusing", seriously consider picking the 'bottom option' in conversations, some of those are amusing (not the "I'm sith" one at the end though - they usually aren't funny!).
I share most of them and couldn't agree more on most aspects.
Though recently I'm having a lot of fun by "playing outside of the box"; soloing flashpoints, getting to datacrons, killing rare world bosses, looking for and engaging enemy players, etc. Leveling goes a lot slower due to that but I'm having fun with it.
Comments
You see what's wrong here right? You and the OP are like "the swtor social hub is too cold and utilitarian.. no depth etc" yet you are saying that the east commons was a good example of a social hub...
The social hub part of EC was a flipping tunnel with some torches... please in the name of all that is good: reference a better example.
I completely agree with the OP.
I don't know if it's just the Bioware transition to making an MMO or maybe a sign that the game needed more development time, but it's lacking in these areas and more, with all the failings, big and small, dragging down what has the foundations of being a good MMORPG.
I really do think development time plays into all this, with a lot of details, big and small, being skipped because they just wouldn't have had time to do them all. I also wonder about the role of some of the Lucas Arts people in all this as well. It seems they micromanaged more than we realize and I can't help but wonder if that didn't hamstring the creative process more than a little.
Even the lack of polish is becoming obvious, with many little bugs that amount to ongoing annoyance, bugs that never should have made it into a retail release and should have been fixed via the patch process by now.
I think they got the story part of the game right, for the most part, with the exception as noted in the OP being the serious lack of any sense of wit or humor. The rest of the game does clearly lack any "soul". World design is technically sound, but lacking in personality. You never stop, look around and just say "wow". I didn't really realize this until now, but when I play MMOs, I'm usually filling my screenshot folder with virtual postcards from the game. I haven't taken a single screen shot since the beginning of Early Access.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Everquest was also released in 1999
. SWTOR was released 12 years later, so yeah I expect better.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I think the OP reflects my own sentiments precisely in that I think the game has no heart.
Regarding social hubs, I started playing EQ around the Planes of Power era when the social hub was essentially the Plane of Knowledge because if you wanted to travel anywhere, it was so easy to go via that zone. High level players would buff you there (buffs which could last for hours btw) and while waiting for groups to form you would use the ooc zonewide chat channel to talk about anything and everything. It was also a major area for crafters and quests. I spent many hours in that zone, often doing nothing but listening to chat.
Nowadays everything is handed on a plate to players. There is no reason to hang around waiting for groups (most things are soloable in many games). Auction houses negate the need for player-to-player trading. LFG tools negate the need to actually find your own groups. Buffs now only last mere minutes and in a lot of cases cannot be cast on players outside your group. Everything is so fast paced, no-one needs to wait for anything...
...therefore no-one needs to socialise with anyone.
[edit] I need a spell checker
I think the design of a social hub is one of the crucial things that can make or break a MMO in the long run. Champions Online even redesigned their central plaza to make it more comfy feeling.
One of the things in WOW were: you could always come to Stormwind/Ogrimar and be "at home". You always met people chatting, roleplaying, standing there. Those cities had a warm atmosphere of hospitality, and they were animted with city life. It was, despite the simplistic graphics, a believable designed city. Attracting players to a hub need two things.
a) The place must feel "warm", it must feel like a home you somehow feel good. Like Mos Eisley. Like Qeynos in EQ2, like Bree in LOTRO, like Stormwind in WOW. Those places had atmosphere, something to feel homely. A place with a positive aura, a feel good place.
b) It must have unique functions. It has the ONLY galaxy-wide Auction House. It has a cantina, right in front of it. It has some unique vendors asf. In Stormwind you have THE Auction House and a market place and some vendors all in a very small area, so people naturally meet there all the time. It was in a low level area, of course.
The issue with SWTOR is: it is WAY too big. People will feel lost. And who is going to declare the social hub? After what concepts? No, such things need careful planning. Bioware planned the space station and for many reasons that was a HORRIBLE idea. No one will ever feel "at home" in this space station.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Great post, Elikal!
I am having fun playing at the moment, but I'm taking it as single player rpg with possibilities for group interaction. I will play out as many storylines as I want to, then I will see if I still want to play in endgame. I don't know what endgame is as my highest char is lvl 22.
I was hoping that by the time I get to 50, there will be a great convergence....a great hub or city where everyone can gather and that's where the real world of the mmorpg begins. I was hoping that the path to 50 was just our individual story lines taking us to that world that will exist at endgame.
OP, what level have you made so far? Has anyone here made 50? Is there a world?
Since I play several chars, my highest in Jedi Knight 34 only. I do not want to rush it. So I also play Jedi Sage, Sith Inq. and experimented a bit with other classes up to lv. 20.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I loved your reference to DS9 when talking about the station. That place felt very lively, even though we rarely saw much of the station itself.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the fleet. One area I see that has promise is the fact that there are already other ships on the fleet you can go to.
You are almost to the level where you go to instances that start on other ships in the fleet. You get to fly a little shuttle from the station to these other ships. There are vendors and trainers on the other ships. It's actually pretty cool.
I could see them adding more stations or places to go within the fleet that could make it better.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Great post.
Unfortunately, for me, these little things are big things so I don't share your affection for the game. That said, it's nice to see someone who enjoys the game but has the same concerns as I do.
Makes me feel validated :]
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
Nice post and it's all true.Seems like mmo developers never played mmos or their beta testers are crap kid testers with zero knowledge
The game was clearly designed by focus groups with clipboards.
They have taken every safe step and all the guaranteed working components from other MMOs and bolted them together.
I have got to level 27 since early access, playing just one character. I'm a Guildmaster and try not to skip much of the cutscenes. I check out all the content that's available to me.
I see so many level 50s though, which is odd as after playing over 3 hours last night i gained one level - with fully rested xp - and questing non stop. Some mad grinders come over from WoW here i think, all of them. And that's just fact, there was nothing available to me to gain faster levels other than maybe grinding elites, which i am sure everyone else does.
But then all i see is 50's in warzones and driving round the space station, with nothing to do. All in the highest tear PvP gear, fully kitted out. The armount of warzones they must do. Soon the wall will hit.
More to the point, agree with OP there, lifeless, i can't find a group for anything, there is no need to group for anything, over 90% of the guild have stopped logging on, no chat, no trade, mindless and complete FPS style PvP.
Single Player RPG with group zones. They made that other game like that, can't remember name. Anyway, unless they churn out new and unique content like drones, there's no community here to keep anyone playing past 6 months, shoot me down if i'm proven wrong, but i'm seeing boredom already in everyone i speak to.
Well after a game launches the dev team usually splits up. Some works on the live game with bugfixes, some works with adding features and content, and some are working on the next expansion. Since i have experienced very little bugs in this game. I sure hope they are working hard to add features and content to the live game.
The game is great and i enjoy it very much. But that fourth pillar, the story. Needs to take a backseat for a while. Now they need to build and add to the other aspects of an MMORPG. And i feel that exploring and random grouping in the wilderness is severly lacking. I just love to go to a unknown place, hunting, gathering, killing rare creatures or beeings. And if i can make a few credits and/or deal a blow to enemy in the prosess, even better.....
Hauken Stormchaser
I want pre-CU back
Station.com : We got your game
Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!
I might buy this game, just to make a video of how bad it is hahaha.
First minut, me walking around in a empty world. Sad music.
Then change to action pumped music, but vid clips of me killing silly worms with my The Incredibles looking Sith!
Going to be the best SWTOR movie ever made!
Hitting 50 tomorrow...........couldnt agree more with the op.
The game is literally lacking soul. It's almost as if none of the leadership at BW is inspired anymore. It's really obvious in DA2 but even more so in SWTOR. Sad I really like some of BW games.
To be fair to BW, the SW franchise is "mostly that way". The Jedi polish halos for a living. The Sith eat kittens for breakfast.
The first 3 SW movies weren't really about Jedi/Sith so much as the characters. The prequels were about Jedi/Sith and were rather more boring - "I'm good, you're evil, lets fight!", and the worlds were also rather more bland
.
Anyway, to make SWTOR "more amusing", seriously consider picking the 'bottom option' in conversations, some of those are amusing (not the "I'm sith" one at the end though - they usually aren't funny!).
Some very valid points and observations, Eiikal.
I share most of them and couldn't agree more on most aspects.
Though recently I'm having a lot of fun by "playing outside of the box"; soloing flashpoints, getting to datacrons, killing rare world bosses, looking for and engaging enemy players, etc. Leveling goes a lot slower due to that but I'm having fun with it.
My brand new bloggity blog.