I wouldn't even try. I would delete this Hello Kitty Wars, fire every one, not hire anyone that has ever worked on a WoW clone or WoW itself, turn everything over to the devs, tell production to stay the fuck away, let the devs do their magic unimpeded, call me if anyone wearing a tie ever came in the room, and do a full blown modern SWG2.
Needless to say I don't see me being hired anytime soon but it will be the best game in history hands down.
even if this is true, as soon as you hire a developer that has played WoW, he will want to add WoW ideas. No need to work on it to know about it.
I would un-release it, buy a new engine .. or build one, and re-release it when it's ready, not when EA says the market is prime. I would also make sure not to disenfranchise large portions of my player base with 2 faction pvp that has a ludicrously imbalanced population.
Honestly, at this point .. as soon as a decent game releases, or the few friends that are still playing stop playing .. im gone .. no matter what 1.2 or 1.3 says. Too much of this game is flat out broken. I'll probably never buy a Bioware game again .. which is too bad .. I used to think Dragon Age would make a good mmo .. but not after this disaster.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
1) Cross server group finders for pve and pvp. This includes pug raids for casuals
2) Make all flashpoints 6 man - 1 tank, 1 healer and rest dps. This is an obvious lesson from WOW. You need to reduce wait times by having more dps per group.
3) Keep putting out pve content to placate the raiders
4) premade vs. premades and pugs versus pugs for PVP. no mixing
5) Story advancement after level 50 - like LOTRO does with their epic story
6) XWing vs. Tie Fighter style multiplayer space sim - make it a third way to advance your character - not just a minigame
7) Alternate paths for leveling - 90% repeated quests when leveling on the same faction is BS
8) Sandbox elements - anything to add life to the static world and fleet
For me personally, I won't return unless they add some great multiplayer space sim content or if people respond really positively to their group finding tools and gearing up mains and alts for pre-ops gear isn't a nightmare.
1) Cross server group finders for pve and pvp. This includes pug raids for casuals 2) Make all flashpoints 6 man - 1 tank, 1 healer and rest dps. This is an obvious lesson from WOW. You need to reduce wait times by having more dps per group. 3) Keep putting out pve content to placate the raiders 4) premade vs. premades and pugs versus pugs for PVP. no mixing 5) Story advancement after level 50 - like LOTRO does with their epic story 6) XWing vs. Tie Fighter style multiplayer space sim - make it a third way to advance your character - not just a minigame 7) Alternate paths for leveling - 90% repeated quests when leveling on the same faction is BS 8) Sandbox elements - anything to add life to the static world and fleet
For me personally, I won't return unless they add some great multiplayer space sim content or if people respond really positively to their group finding tools and gearing up mains and alts for pre-ops gear isn't a nightmare.
i dont wanna start an argument or anything, but normal EV is easy in corelia modded gear. hard modes are easy in normal mode gear. the rais in general are too easy save for the ridiculous number of bugs in them.
i'd make raiding, at least nightmare mode .. much harder and much more rewarding.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Make the republic/empire main "city" different from each other
UI
Make endgame a challange
Redo the armor sets
Make more than 4 classes
Get rid of the filler quests
Ditch the story idea since it will NEVER work in an MMO
Add actual space combat
Make it B2P
Get rid of the Hero engine
Jesus christ, there's too much to list
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
1) Cross server group finders for pve and pvp. This includes pug raids for casuals
2) Make all flashpoints 6 man - 1 tank, 1 healer and rest dps. This is an obvious lesson from WOW. You need to reduce wait times by having more dps per group.
3) Keep putting out pve content to placate the raiders
4) premade vs. premades and pugs versus pugs for PVP. no mixing
5) Story advancement after level 50 - like LOTRO does with their epic story
6) XWing vs. Tie Fighter style multiplayer space sim - make it a third way to advance your character - not just a minigame
7) Alternate paths for leveling - 90% repeated quests when leveling on the same faction is BS
8) Sandbox elements - anything to add life to the static world and fleet
For me personally, I won't return unless they add some great multiplayer space sim content or if people respond really positively to their group finding tools and gearing up mains and alts for pre-ops gear isn't a nightmare.
i dont wanna start an argument or anything, but normal EV is easy in corelia modded gear. hard modes are easy in normal mode gear. the rais in general are too easy save for the ridiculous number of bugs in them.
i'd make raiding, at least nightmare mode .. much harder and much more rewarding.
My focus is obviously on what I WANT. Which are tools for me to log in when I want, find a group of random people and be able to complete the content.
I don't ever want to rely on a guild or schedule my life for a game ever again.
And so that's where my requests come in. Nothing in my list says they can't also make harder versions of that content with better gear. I never bothered with the operations because I refuse to sit on the fleet or commit myself to a guild. If they allow me to easily find groups for doable content, they may actually get me to change my mind eventually and look for a raiding guild for harder content. But I definitely am not interested in that right now.
+1 to space travel and combat- It should be more akin to Eve. You should be able to purchase and customize different ships. You should be able to fly freely around each solar system. What if you could enter a planet’s atmosphere and use your ship like a flying mount in each zone? What if your friends could mount the cannons and fire on space or ground targets while you piloted the ship?
Vehicles- a scifi mmo should have more vehicle options than those little floating lawnmowers that are functionally identical to the ground mounts from WoW. What about vehicles that could fly, vehicles that could hold more than one person, vehicles with functional weapon systems, or vehicles that you can destroy? What if you could drive those awesome walkers and transport your guildies across the zone. As it is now, all the cool vehicles are just static scenery.
Alignment system- There should be a third faction. Players should be able to switch factions based on their alignment; anything to give your alignment more impact. As it is now it’s just cosmetic. There should be other ways to change alignment besides story wheel choices, like killing or stealing from innocent NPCs, or attacking other players of a certain alignment.
Races- Human? or Human with metal eye patch? Make racial bonuses and special skills have more impact.
Classes- Allow each archetype to change between their two paths at any point in the game. Get rid of the mirrored faction specific classes and instead make each class unique. Make faction specific skills that are obtainable only at certain alignments. Or allow classes to train different skills according to which faction they are currently playing.
Dynamic Content- add riftesque dynamic invasions complete with aerial bombardment, vehicles that you could destroy, storm troopers, and all that fun stuff.
Capital Cities- ya.
Elevators- Remove every elevator from the game. jk
Social- get rid of as much instancing and sharding as possible, add a lfg system for the instances and heroics. Make ship interiors more customizable. Give players some social mini games that effect alignment and social points, something to do in the cantinas.
Voiceovers- Keep it for the main storyline. Remove it from all side quests. Have side quests be text based but keep the story wheels. Make the choices more complex and have more varied results, possibly even add random storylines or rewards for some choices.
Shut down the servers, fire the whole dev team, get a new publisher and go back to the drawing board. Come back and impress us when you have something that can't be described as "wow in space".
this game was doomed at the start with the decisions the people in the board room made. Lets make a themepark, wow in space, single player/co-op type RPG (which we are great at) and charge $15 a month...game over before a second of work was done on the game itself. This is a good formula for a single player RPG with co-op. At the most a B2P MMO type, but lets all stop kidding ourselves this was never an MMO.
SWTOR tech support: Stop suggesting that people abandon and restart long quest chains that are bugged. I mean, seriously, who wants to do that. Then when I report it, they tell me THAT ^^^ AND that they are aware of the bug and are working on it. Yeah, right. That was a month ago. I log onto that character every now and again just to SEE if they've fixed it. And....it's a class quest and I can't really go on without it. It's my last quest in the zone. /sigh
So I started an Imp character and started over. The Republic will have to wait, I guess.
So how would I improve SWTOR? Quest bugs should be a top priority, imo, then PvP, then everything else. Just one opinion on the matter.
the game is so heavily instanced that grouping is probably one of the biggest problems with the game, if there was something similar to WoW's dungeon finder tool, then that would help, though to work it would probably have to be cross server too, but even if it wasnt it would still improve gameplay dramatically. one of the games biggest problems is that it takes a long time to assemble a group, time that is often wasted just hanging around an area spamming lfg requests.
Yea as much as I hate dungeon finder and how it destroys the community building tools of an MMO I agree that if you build a single player MMO with little to no world/community building blocks then you need a LFG tool.
In no particular order this is what I would do to fix SWTOR. Keep in mind this list is not trying to turn it into something it is not like many posts here, its been very clear for years that SWTOR is a themepark thru and thru so there is nothing here that will atttempt to turn it into SWG 2.0 (even if it would become a better game but I digress).
1. Remove the rail shooter space combat and implement an open world space system with real PvP and missions.
2. Add in Rated Warzones as quickly as possible and once implemented remove the ability for premades higher then 2 people to join a WZ.
3. Remove the fleets and put everything in Corruscant and Dromand Kas.
4. Reduce the loading time by like 90%, seriously 3 min loading screens are bad.
5. add a day night cycle
6. Nerf the **** out of sorcs/sages
7. Fix illum
8. add the ability to customize your ship
9. Remove the companion system, unless during story missions. If I wanted to play a Pet class I would of played an MMO with pets.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
now obviously force unleashed is sprpg but a lot of this could of worked in a MMO setting and just so much more could of been done to make combat feel like star wars and not tired old themepark with glowsticks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UU2mN1Zvuk
with how this game is zoned they could of done so much more with the enviornments and if they used an engine with decent physics like this one combat would of been so much more engaging http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6pYv5oUr1Q&feature=relmfu
with the kind of money put into this game I don't think is unreasonable ot expect more from the gameplay.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Pull that giant golden hutt right out, shrink it and put a dueling arena right in the big square that tubb of lard sits on.
Then replace it with this gameplay. That gameplay would have two options. PvP and PvE. When you pick the pvp option, you enter a tiered 12 man dueling tournament. When you pick the pve option you enter a pve tournament against named npcs. To top that off, Id look into adding a spectator mode and sidebetting npc's so that players could bet on who the winner might be.
On Coruscant and Dromund Kass I think they should intro this and also add side bet npcs/bookies with visible glass around the tracks and stands to sit in. Once you finish up there, they could add tracks to Tattooine and Hoth and do the same there for more racing gameplay.
Roll out a sort of non combat class that does all sorts of non combat stuff too, crafting, trading, mining, swooping, droid building, musicians. I think swg did that right and see no reason they shouldnt do it in swtor. Ive always felt that mixing combat and non combat gameplay doesnt mesh well and swtor direly needs social/economic gameplay focus. Thats a great proven way to do it.
For Taris, considering its supposed to be in the process of rebuilding, have the crafter element "help rebuild taris". First thing to do would be to build a new city. The way Id go about that is to pre fab the city, model it up and make it modular. Players could then (say over the period of a month) build modular parts and turn them in till it up. Once this city is up, Id have them start on Corellia. These two cities would be where players had homes and player run shops of various types.
For updates on progress with all of this added gameplay, I would ask to have to both game and website, tickers and notifications. When someone leveled up, won a match, tournament or won a race, serverwide notification ingame and mention on the frontpage of the sight. Id do the same with resource gathering,. When someone found a rare material or crafted a rare item, pop server notification,
Space combat needs changed. Take it off of the rails thing. I think the lack of control is a turnoff. The art on it is great but the controls suck. You cant start/stop/ Its like your ship is on a stick and your just there for the ride. Its a bit too scripted.
Game probably needs Dantooine, Manaan, Dathomir and or Kashyyk added -one planet at a time and they should probably look at clone wars (the show not the SOE game) for ability animations, they have tons. Maybe even take a peak at God of war.. Oh yea, and player bounties might as well put those in, then Remove tons of restrictions and put Krayt dragons in Tattooine.
That would be a huge plus if they could do all that and stuff like it.
Problem 1 - It's mostly a solo quest hub leveling game like WoW.
Solution 1 - Scrap solo quest based hubs, substantially increase class quests, heroics, and flashpoints.
Problem 2 - Lousy LFG tool. You must stand in fleet and spam /1 in order to get a group, or use the current LFG tool, which limits you to the zone you're in pretty much.
Solution 2 - Create a world wide LFG channel, a same server dungeon finder, or a world wide LFG tool.
Problem 3 - Jedi/Sith pale in comparison to what I expected based off my experience with KOTOR. Jedi/Sith could spec into any Jedi/Sith type abilities. They were also powerful, and wouldn't of been killed by trash mobs such as regular sized creatures, thugs, normal soldiers/humanoids. Only force users and overly large creatures would be a threat.
Solution 3 - Get rid of the current Jedi/Sith classes and create a Force Sensitive class which can then choose through talent trees which abilities they want to specialize in. Give them basic force powers and stances as they level up (ie. force push, pull, jump, sense etc.. think Jedi Academy general force powers)
Problem 4 - Republic vs. Empire is a great setting for great faction based PvP with galaxy wide objectives. Yet there's no meaningful PvP in this game.
Solution 4 - Create RvR lakes on each planet meant for that level range with siegable objectives that if controlled will grant some type of rewards whether be it gear or planet wide buffs. Create a max level planet that is essential to each side for control of the galaxy with harder capturable objectives than the RvR lakes on the leveling planets, which should grant rewards for controlling.
Problem 5 - Extremely boring mobs you're forced to fight the majority of the time. We should be fighting mobs that are more heroic or makes more sense to be fighting being the classes we chose. The mobs we fight are also too easy. I was soloing mob groups 3-5 levels higher than me and Strong 1 strong mob 3-4 levels higher than me without much fear of dying. A far cry from DAoC where a mob of equal level could kill you if you weren't at full health and mana to begin with and didn't use your abilities wisely.
Solution 5 - Self Explanatory. Just make the game more believable, heroic, and challenging for solo play.
Problem 6 - Lack of replayability due to there not being alternative places to level up. You have to go to the same planets and do the same quests, do the same warzones, and the same FP's.
Solution 6 - Have 4 leveling path's in the form of planet choices, more warzones, and more FP's.
Problem 7 - FP's past BT and Esselles are shadows of those two FP's. They lack dialogue choices and don't change.
Solution 7 - Recreate the current FP's to match the quality of the first FP and create more of them.
Increase the length of time it takes me to get to 50. This will then solve my desire to run FP's on the way to 50 as I will not out level the gear in just a days worth of play time.
Shorten the length of Flashpoints, OR increase the rewards. (Make the mini-bosses into regular bosses and have them drop loot)
Give me Target of Target and Target of Target's Target.
Either reduce the number of abilities I am given OR increase the number of hotbars I am given.
Get rid of Orbital Stations and Ships Airlocks. FFS it shouldnt take 20 minutes to get from one planet to the next with loading screens.
Little to late for this one but, make worlds actual worlds and not a shoe box your dumped into to gain a set number of levels. I wanna ROAM damnit!
Give me a combat log, do not give them a DPS meter.
Put some effort into the GTN, and make it less of a chore to look for stuff.
Make Blizz something other then a tank class, this one is selfish I know, but as a Tank PT I wanna have him out but there is no use really.
Give Juggernauts more then 2 AOE's that can hit up to 5 targets.
Start releasing some of the stuff BIOWARE has said will be coming at some point. Give us some frakkin dates.
The biggest problem I had with the game was a lack of immersion due to lightsabers feeling like beat sticks from Futurama. One hit with a lightsaber should remove a limb or instantly kill someone. I can see how that could be a problem for game balance, but there is a way to fix that.
First, remove the health bars. Those make the game feel like every other MMO.
Next, make every attack miss, be defelected by a lightsaber, or be deflected or absorbed by a personal shield generator. This would bring the game up to lore standards.
Third, make the deflections deplete a focus bar for force users and a shield power bar for non-force users. When that bar runs out, you die from the next attack.
Finally, change the "healing" mechanics to reflect the previous changes. I can't think of a way to have non-force users "heal" force users without breaking lore, so devs can figure this step out.
Unfortunately, it is too late to implement sweeping changes to the game mechanics. They chost to be like WoW from the beginning and they should have changed that decision long before the beta.
1) It needs a look-for-group tool bad, particularly for all the flashpoints.
2) More polish & animation. For example, there are many war front scenes that are pretty static. Something like a scripted ongoing battle like those in WOW would be great.
I'd fire the moron who decided to invest all the money into voice overs at the expense of a slick and responsive UI and an engine able to handle more than two players and the hamster powering the server at the same time.
And make sure the guy never gets anywhere near any project of my company again, even if it's just taking out the trash.
sadly the main complain this game will likelly get is the very low number of player that can be on a given map!also 2 faction is a nono!yes wow has 2 faction but trust me any upcoming new title be it from blizzard or other will need tree faction why you think lineage 2 is doing so good!is it possible for bioware to actually up the amount of player per map?i highly doubt it!but then if they were to lower the shadow etc to wow level they might have a chance!they should add a setting like pvp setting on the fly ,so you re just doing pve no issue but you go where there is a heavy crowd then you clic on the pvp on the fly icon and it set you to lowest setting reload everything and hop your set to have pvp
Its really nice to see how people are responding to this thread
Think i even might put this link in the survey i got when i canceled my subscription with SW:TOR, and maby some of the bioware employees even takes the time to read what people think of the game in an open forum.
That one in a million Anime loving,Workout crazy, Gamer. KiX0@Steam/Raptr
The crafting corner always looks so barren to me, why even have a huge room to get crafting stuff if no one is going to interact with it, thats so silly. You might as well just have one npc that you can learn all your skills from if thats the case, or better yet just have the skills available in the players UI when they want to get them. I think that part of the game was really stupid. I remember running through all the crafting npc's and figuring out what I wanted to get, but i was the only one there. It felt stupid and a waste. Plus I dont know much about the crafting, but from what I read Biochem was the only profession worth taking, all the others were terrible aparently. I read somewhere entire guilds, 90% of the players in them all would be Biochem. If that dosnt show crafting is broken I dont know what would.
The republic side definitely pales in comparison to the empires story as well as theme and tone. It could just be me and my personality, but I felt so much more excitement being an evil Empire Spy then a Light Side Republic Knight. I will say that I did enjoy the Light Side Republic Knight though, I really dont know if its actually a con though, but I cant help but think it. I would maybee suggest spicing up the republic side with some more conterversial story elements, even more so then the empire. For an example, when I was on the empire side, there was this part of the game where we were suppose to poison this entire colony of people by putting chemicals in there water supply. Thats so damn evil, even I couldnt help but think how a game developer could even think about puting content into a game like that. Maybee if republic had something to counter the evilness that is empire spy.
Also the flashpoints are just lame, I dont get having a room with these 8 instances makes for something great. The content is nice, any content is nice but the way its implimented is silly. I found my self and a lot of other flashpoint groups, having higher level players, by higher i mean way way higher, like 20 levels higher, taking groups of low level people through the content, and burning through it in a matter of minites. That is just poor implimentation I think.
The games video settings, were messed up as well. I can confirm this by the large threads that were made on the topic. You could get less frames by setting some settings to high then low, and only when you did a certain sequence of changing settings would you get the optimal settings for the best frame rate. It didnt bother me that much cause I figured that one out in the first 20 minutes of setting the game up, but other people were less lucky that had less powerfull machines then me.
There is also sync issues were frames jump all over the place, they call it optimization issues as well. that is to be expected in mmos more so then any other game because along with the code that the game uses there is netcoding as well, which I dont have the slighest clue about either but the basics or common knowledge.
Also whats with all the useless junk that piles up, half the stuff says "there is no use for this item but can be sold at vendor", none of that crap is worth anything and there is so freakin much of it.
Theres plenty more, but these are some of the first things that rattle of the top of my brain. None are game changers in my mind, the game is very well made and smooth. The way the game flows is very much a masterpeace and is deserving of honors.
Anything to open up the world(s), especially at level 50. Also, create some major social hubs. Make it necessary to go to capital cities. Have places to explore.
Ahhhhh......imagine being able to EXPLORE the Star Wars galaxy. How awesome would that be???
I can get that "Story" was important for leveling, but that is enough, thanks. Let's have an mmorpg now.
Since the core design is pretty much set in stone, there's probably no good way to change up the current worlds to more exploration and the like.
But like you said, at level 50 they could add some new worlds which are more free form in design. Fewer walls /rails and perhaps add some dynamic (unscripted) story content to them, such as running into a villiage somewhere in the desert that has a sandworm problem and you have to help them eliminate them.
I guess I'm saying, give the players areas/content that are bit more unpredictable and unstructured, and for PVP servers, areas of great contention. (so be sure to reward open world PVP heavily)
They can still toss some story content in there, but scale it back a bit and let the player base breath some.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Its really nice to see how people are responding to this thread
Think i even might put this link in the survey i got when i canceled my subscription with SW:TOR, and maby some of the bioware employees even takes the time to read what people think of the game in an open forum.
Good luck with that... ^^ I seriously doubt that the ToR Dev's really care what former customers think about their game. After all, they have been bought out by EA, and from all accounts have sufficient players to make the game at least profitable. Anything beyond that is simply gravy.
Given some of the horrible decisions that went into the original design document (using the Hero Engine, being only one of many...), someone over there is paying much more attention to the bean counters, than the technical staff. Those types of people typically have little interest in anything beyond *this* quarters report.
Comments
even if this is true, as soon as you hire a developer that has played WoW, he will want to add WoW ideas. No need to work on it to know about it.
I would un-release it, buy a new engine .. or build one, and re-release it when it's ready, not when EA says the market is prime. I would also make sure not to disenfranchise large portions of my player base with 2 faction pvp that has a ludicrously imbalanced population.
Honestly, at this point .. as soon as a decent game releases, or the few friends that are still playing stop playing .. im gone .. no matter what 1.2 or 1.3 says. Too much of this game is flat out broken. I'll probably never buy a Bioware game again .. which is too bad .. I used to think Dragon Age would make a good mmo .. but not after this disaster.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I would scrap the online features, and turn it into the Single Player game that it should be. Then it might not be a steaming pile of ... garbage.
1) Cross server group finders for pve and pvp. This includes pug raids for casuals
2) Make all flashpoints 6 man - 1 tank, 1 healer and rest dps. This is an obvious lesson from WOW. You need to reduce wait times by having more dps per group.
3) Keep putting out pve content to placate the raiders
4) premade vs. premades and pugs versus pugs for PVP. no mixing
5) Story advancement after level 50 - like LOTRO does with their epic story
6) XWing vs. Tie Fighter style multiplayer space sim - make it a third way to advance your character - not just a minigame
7) Alternate paths for leveling - 90% repeated quests when leveling on the same faction is BS
8) Sandbox elements - anything to add life to the static world and fleet
For me personally, I won't return unless they add some great multiplayer space sim content or if people respond really positively to their group finding tools and gearing up mains and alts for pre-ops gear isn't a nightmare.
i dont wanna start an argument or anything, but normal EV is easy in corelia modded gear. hard modes are easy in normal mode gear. the rais in general are too easy save for the ridiculous number of bugs in them.
i'd make raiding, at least nightmare mode .. much harder and much more rewarding.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Cut the levels down from 50 to 20
Make the planets less linear
Make the republic/empire main "city" different from each other
UI
Make endgame a challange
Redo the armor sets
Make more than 4 classes
Get rid of the filler quests
Ditch the story idea since it will NEVER work in an MMO
Add actual space combat
Make it B2P
Get rid of the Hero engine
Jesus christ, there's too much to list
MMOs played: WoW, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars, Planetside, Global Agenda, Star Trek Online, RIFT, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, EvE online, APB
Best MMO Companies: Trion Worlds, ArenaNet, CCP
Worst MMO Companies: Electronic Arts
My focus is obviously on what I WANT. Which are tools for me to log in when I want, find a group of random people and be able to complete the content.
I don't ever want to rely on a guild or schedule my life for a game ever again.
And so that's where my requests come in. Nothing in my list says they can't also make harder versions of that content with better gear. I never bothered with the operations because I refuse to sit on the fleet or commit myself to a guild. If they allow me to easily find groups for doable content, they may actually get me to change my mind eventually and look for a raiding guild for harder content. But I definitely am not interested in that right now.
Some unrealistic ideas for a better SW:ToR:
+1 to space travel and combat- It should be more akin to Eve. You should be able to purchase and customize different ships. You should be able to fly freely around each solar system. What if you could enter a planet’s atmosphere and use your ship like a flying mount in each zone? What if your friends could mount the cannons and fire on space or ground targets while you piloted the ship?
Vehicles- a scifi mmo should have more vehicle options than those little floating lawnmowers that are functionally identical to the ground mounts from WoW. What about vehicles that could fly, vehicles that could hold more than one person, vehicles with functional weapon systems, or vehicles that you can destroy? What if you could drive those awesome walkers and transport your guildies across the zone. As it is now, all the cool vehicles are just static scenery.
Alignment system- There should be a third faction. Players should be able to switch factions based on their alignment; anything to give your alignment more impact. As it is now it’s just cosmetic. There should be other ways to change alignment besides story wheel choices, like killing or stealing from innocent NPCs, or attacking other players of a certain alignment.
Races- Human? or Human with metal eye patch? Make racial bonuses and special skills have more impact.
Classes- Allow each archetype to change between their two paths at any point in the game. Get rid of the mirrored faction specific classes and instead make each class unique. Make faction specific skills that are obtainable only at certain alignments. Or allow classes to train different skills according to which faction they are currently playing.
Dynamic Content- add riftesque dynamic invasions complete with aerial bombardment, vehicles that you could destroy, storm troopers, and all that fun stuff.
Capital Cities- ya.
Elevators- Remove every elevator from the game. jk
Social- get rid of as much instancing and sharding as possible, add a lfg system for the instances and heroics. Make ship interiors more customizable. Give players some social mini games that effect alignment and social points, something to do in the cantinas.
Voiceovers- Keep it for the main storyline. Remove it from all side quests. Have side quests be text based but keep the story wheels. Make the choices more complex and have more varied results, possibly even add random storylines or rewards for some choices.
Stopping here for now, text wall.
/thread
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
this game was doomed at the start with the decisions the people in the board room made. Lets make a themepark, wow in space, single player/co-op type RPG (which we are great at) and charge $15 a month...game over before a second of work was done on the game itself. This is a good formula for a single player RPG with co-op. At the most a B2P MMO type, but lets all stop kidding ourselves this was never an MMO.
SWTOR tech support: Stop suggesting that people abandon and restart long quest chains that are bugged. I mean, seriously, who wants to do that. Then when I report it, they tell me THAT ^^^ AND that they are aware of the bug and are working on it. Yeah, right. That was a month ago. I log onto that character every now and again just to SEE if they've fixed it. And....it's a class quest and I can't really go on without it. It's my last quest in the zone. /sigh
So I started an Imp character and started over. The Republic will have to wait, I guess.
So how would I improve SWTOR? Quest bugs should be a top priority, imo, then PvP, then everything else. Just one opinion on the matter.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Yea as much as I hate dungeon finder and how it destroys the community building tools of an MMO I agree that if you build a single player MMO with little to no world/community building blocks then you need a LFG tool.
In no particular order this is what I would do to fix SWTOR. Keep in mind this list is not trying to turn it into something it is not like many posts here, its been very clear for years that SWTOR is a themepark thru and thru so there is nothing here that will atttempt to turn it into SWG 2.0 (even if it would become a better game but I digress).
1. Remove the rail shooter space combat and implement an open world space system with real PvP and missions.
2. Add in Rated Warzones as quickly as possible and once implemented remove the ability for premades higher then 2 people to join a WZ.
3. Remove the fleets and put everything in Corruscant and Dromand Kas.
4. Reduce the loading time by like 90%, seriously 3 min loading screens are bad.
5. add a day night cycle
6. Nerf the **** out of sorcs/sages
7. Fix illum
8. add the ability to customize your ship
9. Remove the companion system, unless during story missions. If I wanted to play a Pet class I would of played an MMO with pets.
10. expand upon the Legacy system
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
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Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Make it a lot more like Star Wars Galaxies.
i really don't see how bioware can fix this game but for me i'd hire this guy for a combat makeover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHY9gQnwtRM
now obviously force unleashed is sprpg but a lot of this could of worked in a MMO setting and just so much more could of been done to make combat feel like star wars and not tired old themepark with glowsticks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UU2mN1Zvuk
with how this game is zoned they could of done so much more with the enviornments and if they used an engine with decent physics like this one combat would of been so much more engaging http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6pYv5oUr1Q&feature=relmfu
with the kind of money put into this game I don't think is unreasonable ot expect more from the gameplay.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I have a few ideas.
start right here.
Pull that giant golden hutt right out, shrink it and put a dueling arena right in the big square that tubb of lard sits on.
Then replace it with this gameplay. That gameplay would have two options. PvP and PvE. When you pick the pvp option, you enter a tiered 12 man dueling tournament. When you pick the pve option you enter a pve tournament against named npcs. To top that off, Id look into adding a spectator mode and sidebetting npc's so that players could bet on who the winner might be.
On Coruscant and Dromund Kass I think they should intro this and also add side bet npcs/bookies with visible glass around the tracks and stands to sit in. Once you finish up there, they could add tracks to Tattooine and Hoth and do the same there for more racing gameplay.
Roll out a sort of non combat class that does all sorts of non combat stuff too, crafting, trading, mining, swooping, droid building, musicians. I think swg did that right and see no reason they shouldnt do it in swtor. Ive always felt that mixing combat and non combat gameplay doesnt mesh well and swtor direly needs social/economic gameplay focus. Thats a great proven way to do it.
For Taris, considering its supposed to be in the process of rebuilding, have the crafter element "help rebuild taris". First thing to do would be to build a new city. The way Id go about that is to pre fab the city, model it up and make it modular. Players could then (say over the period of a month) build modular parts and turn them in till it up. Once this city is up, Id have them start on Corellia. These two cities would be where players had homes and player run shops of various types.
For updates on progress with all of this added gameplay, I would ask to have to both game and website, tickers and notifications. When someone leveled up, won a match, tournament or won a race, serverwide notification ingame and mention on the frontpage of the sight. Id do the same with resource gathering,. When someone found a rare material or crafted a rare item, pop server notification,
Space combat needs changed. Take it off of the rails thing. I think the lack of control is a turnoff. The art on it is great but the controls suck. You cant start/stop/ Its like your ship is on a stick and your just there for the ride. Its a bit too scripted.
Game probably needs Dantooine, Manaan, Dathomir and or Kashyyk added -one planet at a time and they should probably look at clone wars (the show not the SOE game) for ability animations, they have tons. Maybe even take a peak at God of war.. Oh yea, and player bounties might as well put those in, then Remove tons of restrictions and put Krayt dragons in Tattooine.
That would be a huge plus if they could do all that and stuff like it.
Problem 1 - It's mostly a solo quest hub leveling game like WoW.
Solution 1 - Scrap solo quest based hubs, substantially increase class quests, heroics, and flashpoints.
Problem 2 - Lousy LFG tool. You must stand in fleet and spam /1 in order to get a group, or use the current LFG tool, which limits you to the zone you're in pretty much.
Solution 2 - Create a world wide LFG channel, a same server dungeon finder, or a world wide LFG tool.
Problem 3 - Jedi/Sith pale in comparison to what I expected based off my experience with KOTOR. Jedi/Sith could spec into any Jedi/Sith type abilities. They were also powerful, and wouldn't of been killed by trash mobs such as regular sized creatures, thugs, normal soldiers/humanoids. Only force users and overly large creatures would be a threat.
Solution 3 - Get rid of the current Jedi/Sith classes and create a Force Sensitive class which can then choose through talent trees which abilities they want to specialize in. Give them basic force powers and stances as they level up (ie. force push, pull, jump, sense etc.. think Jedi Academy general force powers)
Problem 4 - Republic vs. Empire is a great setting for great faction based PvP with galaxy wide objectives. Yet there's no meaningful PvP in this game.
Solution 4 - Create RvR lakes on each planet meant for that level range with siegable objectives that if controlled will grant some type of rewards whether be it gear or planet wide buffs. Create a max level planet that is essential to each side for control of the galaxy with harder capturable objectives than the RvR lakes on the leveling planets, which should grant rewards for controlling.
Problem 5 - Extremely boring mobs you're forced to fight the majority of the time. We should be fighting mobs that are more heroic or makes more sense to be fighting being the classes we chose. The mobs we fight are also too easy. I was soloing mob groups 3-5 levels higher than me and Strong 1 strong mob 3-4 levels higher than me without much fear of dying. A far cry from DAoC where a mob of equal level could kill you if you weren't at full health and mana to begin with and didn't use your abilities wisely.
Solution 5 - Self Explanatory. Just make the game more believable, heroic, and challenging for solo play.
Problem 6 - Lack of replayability due to there not being alternative places to level up. You have to go to the same planets and do the same quests, do the same warzones, and the same FP's.
Solution 6 - Have 4 leveling path's in the form of planet choices, more warzones, and more FP's.
Problem 7 - FP's past BT and Esselles are shadows of those two FP's. They lack dialogue choices and don't change.
Solution 7 - Recreate the current FP's to match the quality of the first FP and create more of them.
That's just off the top of my head.
Increase the length of time it takes me to get to 50. This will then solve my desire to run FP's on the way to 50 as I will not out level the gear in just a days worth of play time.
Shorten the length of Flashpoints, OR increase the rewards. (Make the mini-bosses into regular bosses and have them drop loot)
Give me Target of Target and Target of Target's Target.
Either reduce the number of abilities I am given OR increase the number of hotbars I am given.
Get rid of Orbital Stations and Ships Airlocks. FFS it shouldnt take 20 minutes to get from one planet to the next with loading screens.
Little to late for this one but, make worlds actual worlds and not a shoe box your dumped into to gain a set number of levels. I wanna ROAM damnit!
Give me a combat log, do not give them a DPS meter.
Put some effort into the GTN, and make it less of a chore to look for stuff.
Make Blizz something other then a tank class, this one is selfish I know, but as a Tank PT I wanna have him out but there is no use really.
Give Juggernauts more then 2 AOE's that can hit up to 5 targets.
Start releasing some of the stuff BIOWARE has said will be coming at some point. Give us some frakkin dates.
Open Server Transfers or start merging.
The biggest problem I had with the game was a lack of immersion due to lightsabers feeling like beat sticks from Futurama. One hit with a lightsaber should remove a limb or instantly kill someone. I can see how that could be a problem for game balance, but there is a way to fix that.
First, remove the health bars. Those make the game feel like every other MMO.
Next, make every attack miss, be defelected by a lightsaber, or be deflected or absorbed by a personal shield generator. This would bring the game up to lore standards.
Third, make the deflections deplete a focus bar for force users and a shield power bar for non-force users. When that bar runs out, you die from the next attack.
Finally, change the "healing" mechanics to reflect the previous changes. I can't think of a way to have non-force users "heal" force users without breaking lore, so devs can figure this step out.
Unfortunately, it is too late to implement sweeping changes to the game mechanics. They chost to be like WoW from the beginning and they should have changed that decision long before the beta.
1) It needs a look-for-group tool bad, particularly for all the flashpoints.
2) More polish & animation. For example, there are many war front scenes that are pretty static. Something like a scripted ongoing battle like those in WOW would be great.
I'd fire the moron who decided to invest all the money into voice overs at the expense of a slick and responsive UI and an engine able to handle more than two players and the hamster powering the server at the same time.
And make sure the guy never gets anywhere near any project of my company again, even if it's just taking out the trash.
sadly the main complain this game will likelly get is the very low number of player that can be on a given map!also 2 faction is a nono!yes wow has 2 faction but trust me any upcoming new title be it from blizzard or other will need tree faction why you think lineage 2 is doing so good!is it possible for bioware to actually up the amount of player per map?i highly doubt it!but then if they were to lower the shadow etc to wow level they might have a chance!they should add a setting like pvp setting on the fly ,so you re just doing pve no issue but you go where there is a heavy crowd then you clic on the pvp on the fly icon and it set you to lowest setting reload everything and hop your set to have pvp
Its really nice to see how people are responding to this thread
Think i even might put this link in the survey i got when i canceled my subscription with SW:TOR, and maby some of the bioware employees even takes the time to read what people think of the game in an open forum.
That one in a million Anime loving,Workout crazy, Gamer.
KiX0@Steam/Raptr
The crafting corner always looks so barren to me, why even have a huge room to get crafting stuff if no one is going to interact with it, thats so silly. You might as well just have one npc that you can learn all your skills from if thats the case, or better yet just have the skills available in the players UI when they want to get them. I think that part of the game was really stupid. I remember running through all the crafting npc's and figuring out what I wanted to get, but i was the only one there. It felt stupid and a waste. Plus I dont know much about the crafting, but from what I read Biochem was the only profession worth taking, all the others were terrible aparently. I read somewhere entire guilds, 90% of the players in them all would be Biochem. If that dosnt show crafting is broken I dont know what would.
The republic side definitely pales in comparison to the empires story as well as theme and tone. It could just be me and my personality, but I felt so much more excitement being an evil Empire Spy then a Light Side Republic Knight. I will say that I did enjoy the Light Side Republic Knight though, I really dont know if its actually a con though, but I cant help but think it. I would maybee suggest spicing up the republic side with some more conterversial story elements, even more so then the empire. For an example, when I was on the empire side, there was this part of the game where we were suppose to poison this entire colony of people by putting chemicals in there water supply. Thats so damn evil, even I couldnt help but think how a game developer could even think about puting content into a game like that. Maybee if republic had something to counter the evilness that is empire spy.
Also the flashpoints are just lame, I dont get having a room with these 8 instances makes for something great. The content is nice, any content is nice but the way its implimented is silly. I found my self and a lot of other flashpoint groups, having higher level players, by higher i mean way way higher, like 20 levels higher, taking groups of low level people through the content, and burning through it in a matter of minites. That is just poor implimentation I think.
The games video settings, were messed up as well. I can confirm this by the large threads that were made on the topic. You could get less frames by setting some settings to high then low, and only when you did a certain sequence of changing settings would you get the optimal settings for the best frame rate. It didnt bother me that much cause I figured that one out in the first 20 minutes of setting the game up, but other people were less lucky that had less powerfull machines then me.
There is also sync issues were frames jump all over the place, they call it optimization issues as well. that is to be expected in mmos more so then any other game because along with the code that the game uses there is netcoding as well, which I dont have the slighest clue about either but the basics or common knowledge.
Also whats with all the useless junk that piles up, half the stuff says "there is no use for this item but can be sold at vendor", none of that crap is worth anything and there is so freakin much of it.
Theres plenty more, but these are some of the first things that rattle of the top of my brain. None are game changers in my mind, the game is very well made and smooth. The way the game flows is very much a masterpeace and is deserving of honors.
Since the core design is pretty much set in stone, there's probably no good way to change up the current worlds to more exploration and the like.
But like you said, at level 50 they could add some new worlds which are more free form in design. Fewer walls /rails and perhaps add some dynamic (unscripted) story content to them, such as running into a villiage somewhere in the desert that has a sandworm problem and you have to help them eliminate them.
I guess I'm saying, give the players areas/content that are bit more unpredictable and unstructured, and for PVP servers, areas of great contention. (so be sure to reward open world PVP heavily)
They can still toss some story content in there, but scale it back a bit and let the player base breath some.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Good luck with that... ^^ I seriously doubt that the ToR Dev's really care what former customers think about their game. After all, they have been bought out by EA, and from all accounts have sufficient players to make the game at least profitable. Anything beyond that is simply gravy.
Given some of the horrible decisions that went into the original design document (using the Hero Engine, being only one of many...), someone over there is paying much more attention to the bean counters, than the technical staff. Those types of people typically have little interest in anything beyond *this* quarters report.