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

[Ohemgee]

He's going to be Jewbacca.

[Ohemgee]

Also, fuck you guys for dragging every MMO that existed in to this.

[Lucavi]

first 3ds and now this

you really suck at picking your battles

He's pretty bad at that.

[Elvis]

Ok, here's the important question.

Can this game get better in time? With all the money being thrown at it, isn't it reasonable to think Bioware would change things as people gave feedback?

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

Ok, here's the important question.

Can this game get better in time? With all the money being thrown at it, isn't it reasonable to think Bioware would change things as people gave feedback?

All games can get better with time, sadly the combat in general is mmo vanilla so many who have played mmos over the past years will get easily bored with it, unless the whole game was basically redone, its doubtful. Now i wont say a game cant be good with bland combat as along as the story is good enough but while these stories are good I wouldn't deem them good enough to ignore the other faults. not to mention they seem to refuse to listen to feedback anyway....

[vrumpt]

All games can get better with time, sadly the combat in general is mmo vanilla so many who have played mmos over the past years will get easily bored with it, unless the whole game was basically redone, its doubtful.

Unless there are people who don't mind that kind of gameplay and don't look at it as a bad thing. That kind of combat isn't dead at all in my eyes, its just nobody can come up with good things to use it in right now.

[Zerocool]

Personally I haven't play it yet, but it seems like the biggest problem people have with TOR right now is that it doesn't differentiate itself enough from the standard MMO model, other than story. A lot of people are tired and bored with the "WoW model". So I guess people that aren't tired of that model yet will still get some enjoyment out of TOR if you're into MMOs and Star Wars. I don't think I'm tired of the standard hotkey mmo combat as much as I am the same boring "content" these devs keep putting out.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

well i can tell you the content is similar lol, kill 20 this, find 10 this, walk here and talk to this guy cuz im to lazy. all the quest are meh.

[Bombur]

The Cynical Brit shows off some Huttball.

[Arelian]

That looks... incredibly boring. =/ It looks like he's doing very little damage to everyone and it just looks like such standard, boring MMO-fare.

[Ezek]

Low level MMO gameplay is generally underwhelming. Go watch some level 14 WSG games and tell me it's not just as bland with the 4-5 abilities available. It doesn't help that the guy playing is keyboard turning along with clicking all of his abilities past 1-6.

[Man0warr]

I greatly disagree with this.

Rofl @ it being the "foundation of all MMOs". Not even remotely true. MMOs were around based off of different models before WoW, and new ones will be brought to market that take over, sooner or later. Just because some aspects of it remain doesn't mean the model as a whole, exactly as it is, is still viable - it isn't.

The ridiculous fact that you threw out regarding MMOs trying to break off from the "WoW model" failing, pretty much every MMO that's released since WoW have failed to achieve any real success. Including the ones who cloned the model (which were the majority), making your argument essentially bullshit.

What is the "WoW model"? I'm talking about the model EQ created and WoW modified. Dungeons to level up, an alternate form of advancement, and endgame raiding as the primary form of character progression. Really the only thing WoW added was the solo questing for 10 bear asses as the primary way to level.

Which is irrelevant to me. SWTOR seems to try to improve on that with voice acting but everyone will skip it on their alts. All I care about is how are they planning on keeping people playing at max level?

No matter how fun/different/original the level up part of the game is eventually it will be stale on your 3rd and 4th char, or go largely unused to people who never make alts. They should focus their resources varied and fun end game because that is where the majority of people will spend most of their time.

People playing WoW didn't get tired of raiding, they just got tired of Blizzard taking 6 months to put out new content. The raiding as endgame model is not dead.

[vrumpt]

completely missed this weeks friday update. They put up an interactive 3D Galaxy map. Each planet has its own description and a short video clip, and you can also view 3D models of all 6 starships. Pretty cool

http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/galaxy-map

[Lordender]

Personally I haven't play it yet, but it seems like the biggest problem people have with TOR right now is that it doesn't differentiate itself enough from the standard MMO model, other than story. A lot of people are tired and bored with the "WoW model". So I guess people that aren't tired of that model yet will still get some enjoyment out of TOR if you're into MMOs and Star Wars. I don't think I'm tired of the standard hotkey mmo combat as much as I am the same boring "content" these devs keep putting out.

Thats why I'm predicting that the game will start out strong but won't have any staying power outside of the fanatic starwars/bioware fans. People looking for that next big hit(MMO Gamers) will last maybe 3 months before going back to the games they are playing now.

[Man0warr]

Thats why I'm predicting that the game will start out strong but won't have any staying power outside of the fanatic starwars/bioware fans. People looking for that next big hit(MMO Gamers) will last maybe 3 months before going back to the games they are playing now.

Just looking at trends, people are leaving all the current MMOs in droves and not returning if they can't find better. It's never really been like this, usually people would just go back to WoW but it's getting long in the tooth. Everyone is waiting for the next game - be it SWTOR, D3, GW2, whatever.

Personally I've been back playing GW1 gathering Hall of Monuments points.

[Agito]

So when was TERA coming out again? It sure does look extremely good compared to every other mmo out there. If you think PvP in Swtor is bad (it's bad) but the PvP in Rift is a hundred times worse, lol.

[Elrina]

tl;dr - Blah blah blah, Old Republic shouldn't have copy/pasted WoW. etc.

No matter how fun/different/original the level up part of the game is eventually it will be stale on your 3rd and 4th char, or go largely unused to people who never make alts. They should focus their resources varied and fun end game because that is where the majority of people will spend most of their time.

People playing WoW didn't get tired of raiding, they just got tired of Blizzard taking 6 months to put out new content. The raiding as endgame model is not dead.

So people should be expected to quickly grow tired of pretty much everything the game has to offer except raiding. Right.

See, this is part of the problem. The active gameplay in MMOs needs adjustment, because it should be fun to simply log on and play the game. When the game is reduced to essentially "raiding" + "everything else", that's when the problem develops. There should be available content outside of raiding that is consistently enjoyable to be a part of over time, endgame or not. If most of it needs to be endgame related to keep interest, so be it, but like you said, it should be "varied and fun". No company in the world will be able to realistically and consistently release entire raid instances fast enough to keep endgame fresh, and that's still only one type of content, and one that can't be done solo or with only a few people at that.

You're saying that raiding as an endgame model isn't dead, and I'll agree. I'll also agree that it probably never will be. But it won't remain the only viable form of endgame. And even if it did, the concept of a "raid" is pretty wide. All a "raid" is made up of is an instanced, specific adventure set, that requires a larger group of people. There are a ton of different ways a raid could be presented, even inside of the same game. (If Old Republic had real space exploration that wasn't on rails, there could be deep space raids in personally owned star ships as well as standard land raids, for example. Then people would have not only endgame "land raids" to outfit their character's gear, but space dungeons/raids to upgrade and outfit their ship(s).)

The biggest problem with The Old Republic is that it's too much of a copy/paste of WoW. They should have tried to excel in other areas, add unique features other than just their story/VA. They should have sucked it up and taken a few risks. Possibly done a different style of combat (maybe an actual action based system, which could have been amazing for Star Wars, even if difficult to put together). They should have had space combat and exploration that wasn't on rails, so that travelling between planets didn't feel like the equivalent of changing zones, but like you actually had free roam of the galaxy (which they could possibly do with an expansion, and there's such an enormous potential there that it's ridiculous). It's a sci-fi universe as well as one inhabited by The Force, and the sheer number of possibilities is mind boggling.

They should have made the game feel different, made people feel like they were a part of the Star Wars universe in a Star Wars game, made it their own, instead of just a SW version of WoW, even if they were keeping a lot of similar concepts and sticking with raids as their primary endgame content.

As it is, as you just said, a lot of people are waiting for a new game. GW2 will be early next year and TERA not long after, and that's just the first wave of Something Different. People are going to have alternatives available, and they'll be coming right around that stage that has seen a drop in population in every other MMO since WoW. I would love to be in the Old Republic beta, just for a chance to play around with it for a bit, because I have absolutely no intention of buying it knowing that I fully expect to be jumping to another MMO within a really short period of time.

[Hyan]

Can this game get better in time? With all the money being thrown at it, isn't it reasonable to think Bioware would change things as people gave feedback?

It has already met its potential. It can get "better" but it won't change.

[Zerocool]

Well, it depends on the type of content they add post launch. If all they do is keep adding more raids and just loading them up with trash and throwing in a few bosses, I can see the game getting boring pretty quickly. If they start thinking outside of the box and start coming up with new and interesting ways for players to progress it could keep players around longer. This is as least one area devs should look at FFXI for diversity in end game content.

[Daemonxel]

Well, it depends on the type of content they add post launch. If all they do is keep adding more raids and just loading them up with trash and throwing in a few bosses, I can see the game getting boring pretty quickly. If they start thinking outside of the box and start coming up with new and interesting ways for players to progress it could keep players around longer. This is as least one area devs should look at FFXI for diversity in end game content.

No offense but everyone keeps complaining about the "go kill 10 of this quest model", what really is the alternative? Do people want to go back to the days of FFXI where every level was a grind, where if you didnt have a set group to level with you were left for hours lfg?(talking about vanilla FFXI here not in its current state of level rearrangment for mixed level groups)I for one really do not want to go back to the end game grind of...who can pull the fastest. We need to find a happy medium in end game where there are world only bosses but with a heavy dose of instanced raids.

They should have had space combat and exploration that wasn't on rails, so that travelling between planets didn't feel like the equivalent of changing zones, but like you actually had free roam of the galaxy (which they could possibly do with an expansion, and there's such an enormous potential there that it's ridiculous). It's a sci-fi universe as well as one inhabited by The Force, and the sheer number of possibilities is mind boggling.

I completely agree with you here on this..They should have made it more like SWG and even EVE to an extent on the space aspect of the game. As for something different I do know that player/guild housing will be making an appearance after launch sometime in the form of guild owned capitol ships.