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Damn Alderaan is friggen huge....
Moaky07
Member Posts: 2,096
Some SWg/sandbox fans in general indicate they want huge open worlds to build in. That isnt what this game is about though, and Alderaan is exactly the way I like my PVE worlds set up.
I actually wish there were some more bind stones. I dont mind traversing an area the first time, as I feel it adds to the immersion. After that the novelty is gone to me. It simply becomes a time sink.
I did run across some lvl 40 mobs at the far end. I am unsure what purpose they serve(highest char is 32), and they werent marked as heroic. I would like to see more planets doing this.....have content for a certain range, then add higher lvl content to get ya to come back to a planet.
All in all I would much rather deal with planets like this vs the open area of Tat.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Comments
the 40 mobs are part of bonus quests that you'll get directed to later after you move on in your story. You'll return after the next planet, if I remember correctly.
There are other planets that have bonus series that "gap up" in level compared to the rest of the planet. Nar Shaddaa is, I believe the first, with a bonus series designed for the 29-32 range or so. Besides Alderaan, Hoth and Belsavis also fall into that category IIRC.
Anyway, I agree with your sentiment, and it's an issue that many have brought up.
For the most part, planets felt like they were being treated as zones from MMOs with a similar questing format (albeit giant ones that covered a wider level range), instead of being sort of a microcosm of the entire planet from those MMOs.
There are reasons for it, the story framework being one of them, but for me I thought they could have gotten more out of the planets and created more "social traffic" by giving players in different level ranges a reason to come back.
It would also give the appearance of offering options for leveling (since more planets would have some content for a particular level range), which would help with some of the lack of leveling diversity issues with alts that some have gotten hung up on.
I just thought it was a linear boring path through to the end of the planet :
Tatooine was the only planet I liked personally.
Yea that was a great planet. I also enjoyed Hoth. Especially the ship graveyard.i had a love/hate relationship with hoth when i still played. Loved the setting and world, hated the talz mobs.
It was the only planet that had good world PVP because of the Balloon ride, it's actually something every one wants and will fight over. Also because of the nature of how you get it, you just get massive long PVP fights trying to stop people from getting there.
If the whole game was like Tatooine the game would be amazing, the rest of it was just dull and linear. They need to get rid of fleet stations, they ruin the game and turn it into Phantasy Star Online. Put people in the frigging cities in the world instead...
For PVP focus, I can understand why huge open areas would work best. As a PVE gamer those type of areas suck.
I guess it depends on why you play games.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I couldn't stand the linear planets at the start, especially that Nar Shaddaa one because it was just so enclosed and linear and didn't feel like a citry at all. The worst thing I found about it as well is every district was meant to be something different and yet it all looked the same.
Yeah it does depend on why you play games, but it does not depend on PvE vs PvP.
I am more of a PvE players and I enjoy vast open non-linear places / worlds much more than small "everything close" ones.
Nar Shadda does suffer from tunnel vision.....I have a couple alts there now to attest to it.
Zones like Alderaan remind me of EQ.....on steroids. The "sandboxy" thing of EQ I miss the most was the day/night causing certain MOBs to be available, or NPCs to follow patterns. That is one thing I wish they had put in.....the lay out of these huge ass zones is perfect though from my perspective.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
It was the only planet that had good world PVP because of the Balloon ride, it's actually something every one wants and will fight over. Also because of the nature of how you get it, you just get massive long PVP fights trying to stop people from getting there.
If the whole game was like Tatooine the game would be amazing, the rest of it was just dull and linear. They need to get rid of fleet stations, they ruin the game and turn it into Phantasy Star Online. Put people in the frigging cities in the world instead...
On my server, which was a pvp server of course, I was there several times and there was no pvp at all. In fact both sides helped each other get the datacron. I thought I was in the twilight zone. There were too many situations where people would get chastised for attacking anyone with red over their head. I honestly thought the community was just a bit off.
Game is huge, theres no doubt about it.
Problem is that BW took approach with quantity over quality and it shows.
More is not always better and SWTOR is shining example of it. It reminds me of Vanguard a bit in that departement.
I really dont understand the contention about quality. Alderaan is a huge ass zone that wasnt throw together as some empty parking lot ala a SWG. It is obvious it was crafted along the lines of a zone in EQ.....only much bigger.
Although perhaps you didnt enjoy EQ. It was my first MMO, and like so many others, your first game sets your standards typically when it comes to an MMO.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
All the planets that were designed like huge shopping malls can piss off.
I enjoyed Alderaan and Tatooine the most. Though they still suffered greatly from having that closed in feeling without the ability to freely explore.
I acted friendly and waited till we get right to the end and boot them all off
What does SWG or EQ have to do with it?
Pretty much everything in a game is "crafted". It just depend how well. Dropping same tilles/models and groups of 3 monsters over and over again is lazy low quality.
In fact you have same cave model throughout whole game for instance. Right there from starting planet to Ilum.
It reeks of lazy "quantity over quality" design just like in ME2 and DA2.
2nd proble with huge worl is: its too huge and servers would have to hold many more players to make it all feel populated. And their serves just cant cope with that. And finally all those players end up on the fleet/endgame, one way or another. Sharding is a decent way to cope with it, but it sucks for open world, especially PvP. And that having 34-40 players in same spot (fighting)makes game slide show - doesnt help with that.
Hey! ME2 was a great game, enough quality and great setpieces to be found in there >(It was good game, but you visited same "cave" over and over again. All over the galaxy. For DA2 it was almost believable since you were in same city, but, all over the galaxy?
Failure of that design philosophy shows in ME3 - its absent.
Actally when i set foot in my second cave on Tython i said to myself - no, they didnt. But, yes they DID ;P All the way up. And thats just one example.
Hey! ME2 was a great game, enough quality and great setpieces to be found in there >(It was good game, but you visited same "cave" over and over again. All over the galaxy.
Failure of that design philosophy shows in ME3 - its absent.
? Are you talking about ME or ME2?? Because I remember from ME where you went to all those planets with your vehicle that indeed you'd find a lot of the same structures and caves. That was a hell of a lot less in ME2 where they got rid of the generic planet searching, had some mining game added instead of it, had a lot less planet visits around than in ME and when you did, they were more varied and different from eachother than in ME. Can't recall that many caves either, when I think 'caves', I usually think of ME that had them in spades.Might have been ME ;P Been a while so maybe my MEs got mixed, now when i think about it, yah, Mako and stuff. Side missions anyway. UNC/N7 stuff.
Hey! ME2 was a great game, enough quality and great setpieces to be found in there >(It was good game, but you visited same "cave" over and over again. All over the galaxy.
Failure of that design philosophy shows in ME3 - its absent.
? Are you talking about ME or ME2?? Because I remember from ME where you went to all those planets with your vehicle that indeed you'd find a lot of the same structures and caves. That was a hell of a lot less in ME2 where they got rid of the generic planet searching, had some mining game added instead of it, had a lot less planet visits around than in ME and when you did, they were more varied and different from eachother than in ME. Can't recall that many caves either, when I think 'caves', I usually think of ME that had them in spades.Might have been ME ;P Been a while so maybe my MEs got mixed, now when i think about it, yah, Mako and stuff. Side missions anyway. UNC/N7 stuff.
Heh, yeah, they got rid of them quickly for ME2, only to replace them with a *really* boring mining game:-/ Made me almost long back to the planet searching with the vehicle and cave dweller hunting.