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How would you improve SW:TOR if you had the chance?
kiiix
Member Posts: 93
After reading post after post of people bashing the game, I rarely seem to come across anyone talking about how they would improve the game if they had the chance, so now I’m asking you:
If you could have the chance to improve SW:TOR so that the game would become the game you where so hyped about a few months ago, what would it be?
*More content
*Harder difficulty
*More “sandboxy”
ect..
(Also mention why you have something against it so that your suggested improvements would make as much sense as possible)
That one in a million Anime loving,Workout crazy, Gamer.
KiX0@Steam/Raptr
Comments
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.
Change the patetic "space combat" mini game feature to a "WC: Privateer"-rish, "Freelancer"-rish formula.
This game has so much going wrong! It would be a challenge to make it an epic game. I could make though.
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.
The first thing I would do (don't ask how, I'm not a programmer) is optimize the gfx engine. Adding more gfx options would most probably be a good start (draw distance, particle effects, max number of rendered toons etc.)
Once that's done, get rid of the sharding. My guess is they put this sharding in the game because they knew their engine performed poorly and they didn't want us to run around with 5fps anytime there was more than 20 toons on screen.
Once the performance issues are adressed then they can start breathing a little life into the game, ie: more ambient sounds, weather, day/night cycles, NPCs that move/chit chat etc.
At this point, I'd be willing to give it another shot.
All the other things I'd suggest would turn this game into a sandbox so they're not reasonable but tbh I wouldn't need this game to be a sandbox to enjoy it. I'd just need the game to offer better performance and immersion.
I'd rebuild it from scratch. The core game design is faulty. You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear as the old saying goes...
But anyways, imo a multiplayer RPG based on Star Wars IP could go in a few directions
1) A coorpg like GW1 or even games like Left 4 Dead with more RPG elements and PvP BGs thrown in - imo that's where BW could really shine
2) a freeform sandboxy game like EVE with large portions of the game generated procedurally
3) a persistent PvP mmorpg with 3+ factions like planetside
The "Let's copy sword and sorcery thing with glowy swords and spaceships instead of griffons" is probably THE worst game design decision I've ever seen. The least they could have done is replace gear grind with skill grind or something that would actually make some kind of sense for the IP. At the moment the game is simply ridiculous - a sci-fi reskin of the sword and sorcery theme. It's got as much to do with science fiction as Lord of the Rings does. Pathetic.
I think you meant to say: "You can't make a shimmersilk purse from a bantha's ear master"
I have a list of 20 things I would improve, but everytime I post it a modertor warns me. There is no point posting anything to improve the game because the clicks and hence the advertising money come from drama not actually suggesting fixes.
This is also the same list I posted like 3 months before the game release. Big three:
1. UI
2. dual spec
3. GTN interface
Also make it feel like a mmo and not just world of queuecraft. Get people out of the cities and the in the worlds. Just sit there and copy and paste code from Instant Adventures or public quest and get people grouping together.
Remove phasing. It is the single worst thing ever introduced to mmo's and I pray Blizzard pays for it someday for even making other devs think it was remotely a good idea
Dungeon finder asap. Being forced to park your toon in the fleet in order to look for a group is crap.
Fix the lag problem in Illum
Add more planets asap
Add alternative 50 gameplay
Lag issues need to be fixed. Ilum can get pretty laggy for me and is barely playable for a friend of mine on his older machine.
Abilites need to go off a lot smoother (at least for my Marauder). My main issue is with Gore and Rupture which, while instant, do not go off immediatly. Another issue with an ability is channeled spells. They channel, but don't do anything. This is horrible for the skill Ravage, which will root you in place while it is channelling, but doesn't actually go off. I understand this is SUPPOSED to be fixed in 1.2 (but we all see how many times they "fixed" WZ wins counting).
Environments need to be less bland. None of them have that wow factor (not world of warcraft). I haven't been amazed by anything in the environment yet.
More warzones need to be added. They need to remove all the flying crap in them too. It is absolutely pointless, why not just spawn us at the gate in all of them. I feel they need to be thought out a little better too. For example, the speeders that fly to east and west in Alderaan Civil War is a horrible idea IMO.
World PvP needs objectives that really matter in order to win in the zone. In it's former state it was plain old stupid because you would get yelled at for actually PvPing. In it's current state it supports the zerg mentality, which I feel doesn't take any skill. I do not find making a bee line towards the enemy and zerging them, then backing off for Valor to reset, rinse and repeat, to be any fun. It would actually work better if you had to hold a certain amount of objectives to advance. As it is, they are only there for valor buffs. The boxes are just horrible as well. Sorry, running around in circles in mid hoping you get to a box first is boring.
RNG gear drops need to be removed completely from PvP. I understand this is being fixed, but I've been through the whole Champ thing and have many duplicate items. Now I am going through it with the Battlemaster set. I have opened over 40 something bags and have ONE PIECE to show for it.
Story needs to have truely different outcomes depending on your choices. For example I killed this dude on my Marauder, but let him live on my Agent, but the end result was the same. Currently, the game only gives you the illusion that your choices make a difference through some different dialogue, but 9 times out of 10 the end result is exactly the same. Your choices didn't really matter.
There are too many generic responses and you really start to notice it after level 30. Sometimes the response doesn't even match what you really want to say. If they are going to give a generic response, they should have multiple versions that are random.
Gear is hideous. I'm not sure what their art team was doing, but if that's the best they can do I dunno... I understand Star Wars is famous for penis head shaped helms, but come on. Some of the helms make you look like you're teletubby, others look like some sort of football or fencing helms, and others look like your character is using vent all the time. I think it's the Coumi chest for the Sith Inquisitor, but it looks like you have paper airplanes on your shoulders or something. I would say close to 97% of the gear is ugly to me.
I feel that most things connected with your ship are an annoyance. There is just too much involved in getting to your ship and getting to the destination. You should not have to walk through all this crap just to get to your ship. You should not have to go through those air locks (or whatever they're called) in between your ship and the world you are trying to travel too.
The map system is kind of annoying too. I tried setting it up so I would see the whole world when I opened that map, but noticed certain things would not show up on the map, so I was forced to use the default set up where it shows it by the "zone" (though I consider each world to be the zone, which is why I would like to see the full world).
Getting stuck in rocks needs to be fixed. I can't count how many times I tried to jump off a small cliff only to get stuck in a rock. Yes, I can type /stuck but I should not have to do it so damn often.
It's too late to do this, but I feel you are forced to follow the road WAY too often. When I first started I would see a quest and try to go the fastest way possible. I quickly learned that you can't do that. If you don't follow the road you will be blocked off somehow. To me, this is a major annoyance. I can understand this happening once in a while, but every time? It would be nice if you could take shortcuts once in a while.
GTN is just a pain to use. Needs to be fixed asap.
Empire and Republic zones mus be spread so far apart because I rarely cross paths with the enemy in regular zones. This makes playing on a PvP server boring as hell. Enemy quest hubs should be placed near each other so you see the enemy more often.
Some of these are minor and some are major. I'm positive EA rushed them to release this game because it could have been much more polished. I was not excited for this game and was not too impressed with what I saw before release. I did enjoy my journey, though. There are just too many annoying things for me to really be happy with this game. I feel they worked on the story more than the rest of the game. I understand this was the selling point, but story alone is not going to hold most people.
close the server down and start from zero, there is no way to fix it, the problems are in his core, and no way to change it
Based on one of the things that I DO see in MMO's I love, that seems missing through most of TOR:
"Where the hell do people live?"
Most of TOR just feels like one Warzone after the other. Even home planets, Coruscant and Dromund Kaas, lack a feeling of "home".
Contrast this with LotRO. Bree. Hobbiton. Dwilond. You can imagine living in these places. The NPC's living in these places.
Part of that feeling, is also in the vendor/trainer placement. In a game like LotRO, vendors are still pretty conveniently placed, but there's still a feel that these vendors are placed the way they are to help the whole town/village/hideout. "It ain't all about you, Jack."
In TOR, the vendors, the cantinas(though not all of them), the trainers... they're all placed where they are for you and other players to get what you need quickly and go. This may be more convenient, but there's an artificiality to it that just doesn't feel quite right.
It's in those sorts of details that make TOR a fun game, but not one where I feel the need to stay permanently subbed. I'm still subbed now, and probably will be for a while longer, but much like Eve, I see this as a game that I'll probably return to every 6 months or so to see what's new. And in the meantime, I'll be subbed to LotRO, as I have been for the past 3 years... also a game that I probably haven't seen combat in about 2 months...
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".
Yeah...this ^
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
I try to imagine that game is not Star Wars ,after that it feels like another MMO that i must to erase from my memory banks and fast.
But it is Star Wars so ,shut down the servers for the time it takes to merge the servers,fix lag ,fix UI,fix ability delays ,hire new customers support department atleast,fix alllot of bugs,remove pathetic spaceports with extra loading screens,fix PvP ,fix stuns,remove opening ceremonies from PvP whatever battlegrounds those were called,etc list goes on,and then come back and make alot happier start (Bioware Strikes Back) style.
edit: and fix those bloody oversized hitboxes ,fix tab targeting.....
Let's internet
1. Improve Performance (BIG MUST!!!)
2. Make the choices you do count for something other then the gear
3. Operation/Flashpoint tool
4. Make ships customable
5. Guild Houses and so
6. Give us the option for Wall of text incase we have done the quest before!
I agree with most of this. But, I am still having fun playing because I know Bioware will address these things eventually.
Yeah for me, the main things is: 1,3,6. Is really the MOST important thing for me
Space lets face it the game doesnt have any.
Guild anything. At this point only reason to be in a guild is for the chat.
UI. Its the worst I have ever seen.
Crafting sorta sucks too. But at least make it so I can sell anything I can make.
Lag is pretty bad. I did my first 30 on 30 pvp the othere day and it was worse then when I played SWG and we would have 50 on 50 .
I would redisgn the worlds to make them less a instance and more of an open world feel where their would be one quest hub in a big range of the planet. make pvp more over lapping lvling roads. ADD a open world space combat. Make crafting important and rewarding, as in don't make Biochem the onlything good. Make so the story quests where only ones voiced over and have more terminal quests to just pickup and do. The bonus quests where really good same with the area(GW2 system like this will be cooler though).
On a side note, I wish when making a class lvl 1-10 should of all been the same for a non force user and force users so that they could pick in a quest to be what side they wanted (emp or pubs) and which sub class and all that cool stuff. (kinda like mist of pandas)
Edit don't forget complete removal of RNG,
Edit: Forgot to add also Ilum was a PVE for pvp gear, which they replaced with a LONGER version PVE for pvp gear. Just remove the whole planet imo.
Screw leveling games, give me something with "End game" at the beginning of the game.
I guess my view is..
My opinion of the game is that it needs such radical change it would be NGE 2.0. That is not talking about adding a bunch of professions (aka reverse nge) its talking about radical change to an existing product.
I've been through that and I would guess there are people who really like TOR just like there were people who really liked SWG ... even tho it was "bleeding subs" blah blah
If I was going to have my vision of the game... it would be a totally new game. Not some "fixed" version of this game.
Then again if *I* was going to be making a Sci-Fi MMO that *I* wanted to play... it wouldn't be a Star Wars MMO or any other licensed 3rd party IP. It would be something the team creating the game had 100% control over. As well as not dealing with various interpretations of existing lore... because we'd be creating all of it for our virtual universe.
1) rework the whole space aspect of the game.
ok so it doesnt have to be as intricate as Eve but it should be along those lines. ships should be pilotable and ,on pvp servers, there should be zones where you can pvp with your ship. if you get a ship big enough(they should be hard to get) you should be able have friends come on board and either man manual guns or pilot smaller "drone like" mini ships in pvp encouters. the current space shuttle/mini game is one of the worst space experiences ever implemented in any game. unforgivable.
2) make new NON LINEAR worlds that are actually useful, and where people have to spend time gathering resources or killing elite monsters etc.
i've never felt like such a rat in a maze. i can't belive they have the guts to call those "zones" worlds. just lazy, lazy, lazy.
3) fix combat skill lag, lag, balance, etc, etc.
good god, this game's pvp sucks. i really dont need to say anything more. it's slow, clunky, buggy, frustrating. this MUST be improved and fast.
4) fix the resolution and world/armor textures.
what's up with that anyways? more lazyness.
As a PvPer I find this the most lacking aspect of TOR for me. My goal would be to either completely wipe PvP from the game, because, in its current state it is awful OR fundamentally redo PvP.
In a game based on the Star Wars IP one expects epic PvP - at its core Star Wars is a story of good vs evil, dark vs light, jedi vs sith - in TOR we are given Huttball and Ilum to play this out. PvP should have been and should be a fundamental core aspect of TOR - unfortunatly its not, nor will it ever be.
Bioware picked the safe route.
I'd first remove all instances and stop the focus on scripted singleplayer missions.
Then I'd rework it so that it wasn't just a WoW clone and actually brought something new to the table.
Then I'd make sure what story there was actually made sense, instead of all the art and sound and story just being a rehash of the Original Trilogy.
Hell, maybe I'd set it during the Clone Wars, if I wanted to mimick the OT.
Fair enough on all the other stuff, but I can't imagine how this game could be LESS "instancy" on a planet by planet basis.
I agree on the PvP "bottlenecking". In a game where you have both PvP AND PvE servers, it's absolutely unnecessary to limit access to enemy territory, IMO. PvP'ers play on those servers to PvP. Anybody that doesn't like that can play PvE and flag themselves any time they want the full blown PvP experience.