Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[Dantrag]

How so? WoW has been doing it since it came out. It's a huge success.

[Man0warr]

WoW isn't a success because of being able to mod it's UI.

It's caused a ton of grief - for Blizzard and casual players mostly. Do you realize the flak they have gotten over GearScore?

Not to mention modders basically dictated raid encounter design because of warning mods.

Oh and the mod that was active for about 2 months during ICC that let players draw shit in on the floor that anyone in their raid could see. Including penises, cuss words, etc.

Developers don't want to have to deal with that shit. If it was limited to cosmetic changes (simple xml stuff like EQ2 has) I don't think BioWare would have a problem with it but giving access to an entire scripting library/language like Blizzard gave players got out of control.

[Zerocool]

I'm not really asking for a "WoW level" of add-ons and customization, but something like Rift has would be great. Just starting the game and playing it for a few levels, sure the UI is fine. But for an MMO that people are expecting to play for a long period of time, no customization can get annoying. Once you're used to and have a feel for the game, you want to customize it to your playstyle. But if people can't get comfortable playing, chances are they just won't play at all. It's a stupid reason to lose people for such an easy fix.

[ringthree]

WoW isn't a success because of being able to mod it's UI.

It's caused a ton of grief - for Blizzard and casual players mostly. Do you realize the flak they have gotten over GearScore?

Not to mention modders basically dictated raid encounter design because of warning mods.

Oh and the mod that was active for about 2 months during ICC that let players draw shit in on the floor that anyone in their raid could see. Including penises, cuss words, etc.

Developers don't want to have to deal with that shit. If it was limited to cosmetic changes (simple xml stuff like EQ2 has) I don't think BioWare would have a problem with it but giving access to an entire scripting library/language like Blizzard gave players got out of control.

First of all, none of what you are talking about is about the UI. UI customization is pretty much a given at this point, even FFXIV had it, and that game was an abortion at launch.

Yes, there may be a few drawbacks to add-ons, but anyone that looks at WoW and says that add-ons are on-balance bad are either a casual (as in a bad player that doesn't want to be good) or someone with an agenda (like glossing over a failure in a game they want to play).

[ringthree]

I'm not really asking for a "WoW level" of add-ons and customization, but something like Rift has would be great. Just starting the game and playing it for a few levels, sure the UI is fine. But for an MMO that people are expecting to play for a long period of time, no customization can get annoying. Once you're used to and have a feel for the game, you want to customize it to your playstyle. But if people can't get comfortable playing, chances are they just won't play at all. It's a stupid reason to lose people for such an easy fix.

Yeah, I am getting this weird impression on this and other forums that people are really willing to look past some major flaws just because SW + Bioware = Awesome. It is indeed an awesome combination, but ignoring the past 5 years of game development is probably not a good place to start to get people to stay playing your game. It really scares me when the leveling experience is the core of the game development time before launch. Do they expect people to play the game after the "200 hours" of initial game time?

[vrumpt]

WoW isn't a success because of being able to mod it's UI.

It's caused a ton of grief - for Blizzard and casual players mostly. Do you realize the flak they have gotten over GearScore?

Not to mention modders basically dictated raid encounter design because of warning mods.

Oh and the mod that was active for about 2 months during ICC that let players draw shit in on the floor that anyone in their raid could see. Including penises, cuss words, etc.

Developers don't want to have to deal with that shit. If it was limited to cosmetic changes (simple xml stuff like EQ2 has) I don't think BioWare would have a problem with it but giving access to an entire scripting library/language like Blizzard gave players got out of control.

I totally agree. Addons are very very nice to have, but it sucks having to use them at the same time. The amount of addons you "need" to do any given thing without being gimp is preposterous, at least in WoW. I don't want my SWTOR UI to look anything close to the combustible shitstorm of information on the screen you "need" to have in WoW, for raiding or PvP or whatever.

I'm totally against addons at this point, if something is so important that it needs to be included in the game UI then Bioware can add it themselves. i really really do not want to have to install and keep track of 50+ addons in order to be able to do anything because i'm considered gimp if i don't.

It really scares me when the leveling experience is the core of the game development time before launch. Do they expect people to play the game after the "200 hours" of initial game time?

And you, nor anybody else knows what the retail game experience is like after the leveling experience is over.

[Man0warr]

It really scares me when the leveling experience is the core of the game development time before launch. Do they expect people to play the game after the "200 hours" of initial game time?

That's the same for every game. The amount of endgame content they are releasing with launch is on par with WoW and RIFT, if they don't have more in development by the time people are hitting the level cap then the game won't last - but they have a couple months of leeway.

The core leveling game is what they should have been focused on.

[vrumpt]

yay!

Another FAQ: those who played in the Nov 11-13 weekend, and general testers, will keep their characters for the upcoming #SWTOR weekend.

some other dev tweets

If you played in a #SWTOR testing weekend or event previous to the 11-13 Nov weekend, your characters will not carry over, sorry.

Morning. FAQ about #SWTOR client - do you need to reinstall for upcoming weekend if you were playing past weekend. Answer is no.

FAQ: the game client for the upcoming testing weekend will be made available when we're ready to make it available... patience please.

FAQ: That client, when you have it, should be able to be patched to the #SWTOR live client (ie, no re-download). No guarantees tho'.

[Dantrag]

Sounds like they know what they're talking about!

[ringthree]

That's the same for every game. The amount of endgame content they are releasing with launch is on par with WoW and RIFT, if they don't have more in development by the time people are hitting the level cap then the game won't last - but they have a couple months of leeway.

The core leveling game is what they should have been focused on.

I have already gone over this before. The core leveling game is a most a couple of weeks of content. End-game is months and months and is what makes or breaks an MMO.

I am getting to the point where it looks like anyone that keeps defending this game on it's leveling experience is really just desirous for this game to be good, rather than having evidence that it is good.

[Natallon]

Hopefully no re-download!
That thing took me forever to install.

[XalienLevi]

I have already gone over this before. The core leveling game is a most a couple of weeks of content. End-game is months and months and is what makes or breaks an MMO.

I am getting to the point where it looks like anyone that keeps defending this game on it's leveling experience is really just desirous for this game to be good, rather than having evidence that it is good.

As far as I know, all end-game content is being tested internally, but you've probably seen this shit before already. You hit 50 and jump right into the grind. I didn't play WoW but I know in RIFT, Greenscale required T2 gear. Unlike RIFT, Bioware says that once you hit 50 you can jump right in...I guess to experience the story mode? After you get some gear you can try the hard mode version of the raids. There will also be hardmode versions of all the flashpoints(instances). It's pretty typical endgame + Illum PvP World with Objectives. I haven't reached those levels nor do I plan to ever.

From what I've seen of this game and their design philosophy - they are going in hard for the casuals. There's really no telling how this game is going to keep the hardcore crowd interested until we start seeing some real playthroughs. So I guess all one can really do at the moment if give you a "review" based on their little adventure to level 20+. Take it or leave it?

Hopefully no re-download!
That thing took me forever to install.

The "patch" is 20GBs. So yea. You're re-downloading the whole game.

[Ezek]

TOR is almost certain to be a mostly casual game, perhaps with the hardmodes catering to the more hardcore crowd, so sorta similar to how WoW works (or worked, dunno how it is now since I stopped playing after WoTLK).

[vrumpt]

TOR raids will have 3 difficulty modes; normal, hard and nightmare. normal mode i guess is the mode that you can do right when you hit 50, and also has those item bags that has your loot after every boss. Its the PUG friendly difficulty basically.

[Dantrag]

But will they add... INFERNO?!?!?

[Zerocool]

Pretty much any game coming out these days will be considered casual, because that's where most of the money is at. Even Archeage is a casual version of UO and L2. It's because casual = convenient and most people are getting to the point where they don't want to spend hours of doing nothing to have fun for 5 mins. Especially with GW2, they're showing us we can have a fun, engaging game with massive content without the hassle of waiting hours for respawns or wading through 5 hours of trash just to fight a few bosses. In that way GW2 actually sounds more casual than TOR, but honestly to me it sounds more fun.

I don't know, I just hope Bioware doesn't restrict TOR end game to only raiding. It's fine for a bit, but after a while it gets boring running the same shit over and over, just to have them implement a "new" raid and do the same thing over and over again. This is really where devs need to start looking at FFXI end game and implement more diverse content.

[Hyan]

Pretty much any game coming out these days will be considered casual, because that's where most of the money is at.

In the short-term, yeah, but most of the time these games tend to slowly wither away in few years at most. Commitment is lost.

I dunno if people consider it a bad thing tho, but I think the general consensus is that if you start an MMO you expect to hang around for a long time, even if there are periods when you don't play at all. IMO you need a massive playerbase for that to be viable, which none of these games manage to build up over-time.

[ringthree]

In the short-term, yeah, but most of the time these games tend to slowly wither away in few years at most. Commitment is lost.

I dunno if people consider it a bad thing tho, but I think the general consensus is that if you start an MMO you expect to hang around for a long time, even if there are periods when you don't play at all. IMO you need a massive playerbase for that to be viable, which none of these games manage to build up over-time.

I agree. Casuals are very fickle and non-committal, trying to build a long-term MMO around them is impossible without a hardcore and devoted player base. I know people are looking at the bags of money that WoW brings in, they did it by slowly integrating casuals into the main portion of the game.

That doesn't mean that SW is going to be bad at all. It will probably be an awesome game, but in the end it's going to end up like the rest of the WoW-killers. Successful but not world dominating.

[Natallon]

The "patch" is 20GBs. So yea. You're re-downloading the whole game.

Wah!

[XalienLevi]

I don't know, I just hope Bioware doesn't restrict TOR end game to only raiding. It's fine for a bit, but after a while it gets boring running the same shit over and over, just to have them implement a "new" raid and do the same thing over and over again. This is really where devs need to start looking at FFXI end game and implement more diverse content.

I'm not even sure we've seen any real talk about the endgame in TOR. We saw that brief demo raid at E3. This whole game is being sold on all this voice work and story while getting to the top. What about the poor chaps that need to get to 50 first? They skip all the cutscenes, the main meat of the game, the whole 20gbs worth, and then what? This game is not for them. Not yet at least.

Don't get me wrong though, I personally love leveling up and endgame is only as fun as you make it with your friends. But I think this game is going to be really different in that respect. I believe they want us to play KOTOR 3-11 instead of sitting on one character and running the same shit all day.