SWTOR
- Thread starter Shonuff
- Start date
moontayle
Golden Squire
- 4,302
- 165
That was going through my head as well. I'm not certain what the alternative is though. I mean, if you think about it there is a healthy mix of level increases versus gear increases to keep people going. WoW (and SWTOR) even goes so far as to deprecate previous tiers and make the gearing up push a lot easier as more tiers are added so people don't fall behind. It does feel like the genre has fallen into a rut though.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
- 2,383
- 276
The main disadvantage to the WoW model is the fact that all older content is obsolete not only for those that played it (thats normal) but also pointless to do for newcomers. I think TOR actually gives you a set of good lvl50 gear at a terminal for free, which you had to play a decent amount of time for back at release? When you come into a game a year or three after release, ideally you should have a wealth of things to do. Instead, the Blizzard-WoW design catches you up to the very top ASAP. Sure you could do the things that are pointless just for kicks, but if we are honest, who does? So I guess I prefer the EQ model if you only give those two options, but ideally you would have the progression tiers designed in such a way that doing them all has a purpose even years later but its also not too much of a penalty if someone wants to catch up.
This game tanked hard but I less inclined to call it wow clone for its reason for failure. Having recently started to replay the mass effects series up to part 2 now. SWTOR with out a doubt is right out the bioware play book Tor and me2 are exact copies of each other. I think bioware just grossly over estimated how me2 reskin with mmo elements would play in this market.
I'd love to see the original design document for what exactly they had planned for the endgame of SWTOR. I enjoyed the game for a few months, but my opinion was the same as yours in that the WOW copied talents and grinds really did not appeal to me. Since that model chased away a good chunk of people, I'm not sure why they'd continue down the same path for loot, except that they might not have any other options.
Caeden
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 7,397
- 12,024
I agree that SWTOR is like Vanilla in terms of features (and even less so at launch - another blunder but they were decently quick to fix), but the issue is that Vanilla had a lot of "mystery" compared to TOR. I mean, both were on rails, but in TOR there is literally one path whereas Vanilla presented Kalimdor and EK as reasonable paths with criss-crossing and the quests seemed to get sparser and more involved as you went on which (for me) increased that mystery. (Others would cry they were just broken, unfilled zones...whatever) I think SWTOR could have benefited from spending more time on the correct mmo features and less on streamlining content. Its a big reason why the fully voiced portion really failed on the planet level. There's zero freedom. WoW had freedom galore in comparison.
The circle is now complete 2 doctors and now one CEO. I think its safe to say this MMO might rank right up there in terms of collateral damage for its failure.
Rhuobhe
N00b
- 242
- 1
I feel bad about anyone losing their job but this was one of those few rare instances where the people who dropped the ball were flayed alive for it.
moontayle
Golden Squire
- 4,302
- 165
No. And really, why would they? The planets themselves were used as leveling tools. The only planet that isn't technically in that category is Ilum and even then I've used it to finish toons that completed their story before 50. There's no point in them releasing a planet like, say, Corellia or Hoth that has a decent amount of content to burn through, say four to five hours worth, if there's no real incentive to burn through it. People would do it once, for the story, then never touch it again. When Makeb comes in a few weeks it'll come with an increase of levels giving players a reason to keep going back. I imagine this is pretty much how new planets are going to get introduced. They may do a mirror planet that also takes place over a similar five level range as one that already exists but all information on future content has pretty much dried up with Makeb so who knows.
Now, if you want to split hairs they did introduce new locations that exist on other planets. Denova and Asation are two planets that both serve as the locations of Operations and Warzones. You just can't run around on them like the leveling planets. But since you can't run around on them I don't think they count either.
Now, if you want to split hairs they did introduce new locations that exist on other planets. Denova and Asation are two planets that both serve as the locations of Operations and Warzones. You just can't run around on them like the leveling planets. But since you can't run around on them I don't think they count either.
Izo
Tranny Chaser
- 18,640
- 21,635
New planets could mean any number of things. One could interpret it as new content as a whole, new meaningful locations to explore, new levels, new end game content, new something, new anything. You know, a reason to play at all or at the very least resubscribe. No need to go all Stanlee Roo Ding Dong Bannu about Merrith' vague statement imho 
- 25,448
- 37,590
There was a developer which was posting on one of the somethingawful "lets play" threads and he gave a good insight into the development of swtor. Basically what he said is they put all of their eggs in one basket, the stories. That was swtor in a nutshell. Everything else was basically an afterthought.80% of their dev time was spent on the story, the dialogue scenes, etc. They wanted players to keep leveling new dudes and seeing story after story rather than what people usually do, level up a dude and spend the rest of their time on the end game. What he said is they should of done is laid out the stories up until act 2 in most cases and developed more of the end game rather than spending all that time on the story for every class. He said the issue was constantly being brought up to management but they didnt listen.
He also said that the engine was not the problem, in fact he praised the engine for being able to implement shit on the fly rather than waiting for weeks on new builds to see the stuff actually in game. You could now have tons of people working on in game systems and implement them on the fly rather than, again, waiting on new builds.
He also said that the engine was not the problem, in fact he praised the engine for being able to implement shit on the fly rather than waiting for weeks on new builds to see the stuff actually in game. You could now have tons of people working on in game systems and implement them on the fly rather than, again, waiting on new builds.
Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 18,162
- 6,963
Simply put, the main selling point was the stories. Even a good planet focused story was nice (Belsavis was a good one imo). Personally I would have released a couple more planets at this point to extend the class stories along with actual planet story to unlock new areas. When I quit their "new planet" was Denova...which wasn't a planet at all, it was their new Op. Admittedly it was better than the previous stuff, but didn't have Nightmare mode done, and was 1 less boss than either of the previous 2 Ops. Knowing this was their excuse for a new planet just made it clear the most we were going to get was the "events" which frankly weren't that interesting. The whole Rhak'goul thing should have been 1 Flashpoint and 1 actual planet, not some cheesy "event" with shitty dailies.New planets could mean any number of things. One could interpret it as new content as a whole, new meaningful locations to explore, new levels, new end game content, new something, new anything. You know, a reason to play at all or at the very least resubscribe. No need to go all Stanlee Roo Ding Dong Bannu about Merrith' vague statement imho
People get tired of going to the same places to do shit. Just not enough new content to satisfy most people.
I actually started playing this some again. Guild Wars 2 was getting stale to me. Just levelling a newbie, so don't have to worry about running into any endgame hijinks.
moontayle
Golden Squire
- 4,302
- 165
Right. I wish they had taken the Black Hole (Corellia) and Section X (Belsavis) dailies and implemented them into Denova and Asation instead. Then at least they could pretend like they were making an effort to bring new planets into the mix. But no, they took us back to old planets, including one that already had dailies.