Game is a single player RPG with some co-OP features that EA slapped with the MMO tag so they can trick some people into paying them $15/month. Honestly, its as SIMPLE as that.
The argument that it's a SRPG is simple: the MMO parts feel like add-ons to the basic single-person story mode. The game doesn't feel *designed* as an MMO with an awesome single-person storyline. That's the disconnect, and what annoys so many folks.
Sure, there are plenty of grouping opportunities, and it's not really just a solo game. But it's hard to argue that this isn't KOTOR 3 with multi-player added on, rather than being The Old Republic, a distinctly new MMO. So no, I'm not annoyed when people yell SRPG at all. Bioware certainly wasn't, given how many did just that during the Beta.
Moving around the world was a series of loading screens and corridors, this for me really took away any massively multiplayer feeling from it, everything was an instance and when you were in there you were on your own most of the time apart from on planet surface and on main fleet. Space should have been open to fly around in rather than another single player activity.
It's not a single player game but it's a co-op RPG its not an MMO just because it has hubs you can actually meet other players in.
I agree the zones always felt very small. the loading screens didnt bother me it just felt very confined. Even coruscant which in theory should feel massive do to such a large population actually felt pretty small
Edit: I liked the space combat the problem was how limited your selection was. If your going to do on rails space you should have ALOT of different missions available. I don't recall exactly how many space missions there was but i know at 50 it didnt take me much longer then 1 hour to run them all.
It doesn’t matter if you can solo to level cap or not. The beauty is that we now have options to experience these games how we want. Could MMOs use more group centric content to give those so inclined more challenges to tackle? Maybe. But complaints that an MMO that clearly has group content (whether it has enough of it is subjective) is a singleplayer game because it doesn’t explicitly force you to play with others is just ridiculous.
This is only part of the point that is being made and of itself may be ridiculous.
- Heavy instancing = no others around, I have literally been in game for 20 min and not
seen another player.
- NPC's might as well be a data terminal, the world is sterile.
- Companions eliminate the need for grouping and the game mechanics do not foster
grouping.
- There were areas of the game where co-operative play was needed, but it boiled down to less tham 2% of my time ingame, hardly what you would call grouping.
- Outside of leveling there was no need for grouping (crafting, exploration, PvP) and when leveling it was minimal (more like co-op).
It is just not the leveling that makes this a(n) SPG, it is the sum of its parts. The entire game feels like a co-op spg and not an MMO.
But you forget to mention that the content is made for 1 PLAYER, if you add several more players this content will be like VERY VERY EASY..So to get any kind of challenge you need to SOLO..I called this the "forced solo effect"..
Othervise..Sure there are some REAL groupquest ..maybe at a ratio 20% group and 80% solo..
If you ...feed the community with soloable content like this, most players WILL skip the hassle of grouping ..thus the MMO fans started to call these games "singleplayer games" with an optional grouping..
it will not matter how long article you write..The outcome of these new ways of developing MMO's to the mainstream masses will always be the same..Players WILL communicate less if it isnt needed, it's rather logic.
My solotion to all this is Dynamic content that scales to the size of the group..or like in AOC you could choose an alternate version of the map that was "group only"..
So making everything instanced and giving everyone NPC companions doesn't contribute at all to the game feeling singleplayer with optional coop? (which is what people toss around).
It doesn’t matter if you can solo to level cap or not. The beauty is that we now have options to experience these games how we want. Could MMOs use more group centric content to give those so inclined more challenges to tackle? Maybe. But complaints that an MMO that clearly has group content (whether it has enough of it is subjective) is a singleplayer game because it doesn’t explicitly force you to play with others is just ridiculous.
This is only part of the point that is being made and of itself may be ridiculous.
- Heavy instancing = no others around, I have literally been in game for 20 min and not
seen another player.
- NPC's might as well be a data terminal, the world is sterile.
- Companions eliminate the need for grouping and the game mechanics do not foster
grouping.
- There were areas of the game where co-operative play was needed, but it boiled down to less tham 2% of my time ingame, hardly what you would call grouping.
- Outside of leveling there was no need for grouping (crafting, exploration, PvP) and when leveling it was minimal (more like co-op).
It is just not the leveling that makes this a(n) SPG, it is the sum of its parts. The entire game feels like a co-op spg and not an MMO.
Mike so misses the point of the debate. He admits playing with friends on a regular basis, so he really doesn't have the proper frame of reference, he should try going in by himself and seeing how worthwhile grouping turns out to be in that scenario.
The game mechanics do not reward or encourage grouping, they merely make it available if the player wants to with no real incentive to actually do so.
In Mike's case, his incentive is to hang with his friends, regardless whether it is the most efficient or practical way to play the game.
In SWTOR if you are spending all of your time grouping, you're probably doing it wrong, it was designed for players to enjoy their personal stories, and not to really create stories by interacting with other players in the game world.
Saying that no modern MMO rpg since WOW launched encourages (or forces if you will) goruping doesn't excuse the fact that for the most part, modern MMO's are all solo oriented experiences (including WOW) and SWTOR is just the worst of the bunch.
Nothing like killing a virtual world than having everyone stop moving to watch their personal story, cut scenes. The only cool part to this was when players in a group would be asked to vote on taking a certain action or not.
Heck, even now in TSW I'm annoyed by how I'm dragged out of the world to watch the mini movies. I have to quickly mute vent to stop the background chatter of my friends and then listen to this story, which although I really quite enjoy, it doesn't make for a proper cooperative MMORPG experience.
Another thing to remember, randoming grouping with someone is not the same thing at all as socialization. No modern MMORPG has sufficient time sinks built into them to permit players the time to actually socialize with each other. Instead they jump in, complete the current objective and then disband, more often than not with nary a word said between them.
That is not socialization folks, and you'd have to have been in the early titles to understand what people like myself are looking for.
Also, it's not enough to say that forced grouping is never coming back. Never say never, I suspect one day people will really grow weary of the current MMO design and the genre will implode in upon itself.
There will huge finanical disasters in the MMO space (if it hasn't already happened with SWTOR) that will really sour investors appetitie for large cash investments into MMORPG's (recent events with 38 Studios haven't helped) and they'll withdraw from the market.
The genre may then arise from the ashes with smaller budgets, new ideas and perhaps a return to a few old ones to give rebirth to a new generation of titles.
While it is a bit of hyperbole to call SWTOR a single player RPG, it's not all that inaccurate either.
Mike is just a bit upset because he's a SWTOR fan and hates to see his game slammed so much even when people are leaving the title in droves for not only this complaint, but many others as well.
TLDR: MMORPG's are about the stories player make interacting between each other (even in a good theme park, see DAOC, circa 2003) and not about the stories the Developers set before them. Those clearly belong in the single player game space.
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
You mention that people can group for content and, of course, that's true, but the way the game has been created gives no reason to do so. Let's take TSW for example, you can solo through that all the way to the end, but that's where the similarities end.
TSW has open zones, TOR has corridors, TSW mobs are tough so even solo you know a group would be good. TOR you can steamroll everything do there's no need to get anyone else, plus you also have npc companions to make it even easier. TSW has open questing, TOR has the usual hubs.
It's those and many other reasons why TOR plays like a single player game, not just the grouping requirements.
The problem is not in which systems a game uses, but HOW it uses them. The problem with SW:TOR for me was that it had more single-player instanced content than any other MMO I've ever played. And that was mainly due to the need to deliver a coherent personal story.
And because story was a central pillar of the game, it HAD to take you out of the common game world to deliver that story to YOU. But the side-effect of this is that people remember the story parts of the game more than the general play.
They may have only spent 25% of their time ingame in story instances, but that experience is remembered far more clearly than the dozens of hours spent in open world play.
Nail on the head with this one ...
GW1 was called a CORPG for a reason. TOR feels the same way.
It is not about group content or group quests, but there is NOTHING to distinguish the group from other players. There is no difference if you complete the flashpoints and other things with a random PUG or with a "GUILD". Taking more players to a quest is NOT GROUP CONTENT.
F.e in EVE (the game I have the most experience in) group content is a whole different level than single player content. It does not mean running missions with friends (the equivalent of TOR flashpoints). It means acting as part of a larger entity, feeling that you are part of something bigger, having goals that are clearly above a single player.
The biggest selling point of TOR (the personal hero story) is its biggest flaw. You cannot make everybody in the world a hero because then nobody is one. You have to separate the hero from the other heroes to make that story unique. This will never work with a live and breathing world.
SWToR isn't a SP rpg but it would have been better of if it was, the MMO part does nothing but detract from the main point of the entire game IE the story.
This poster has it EXACTLY right, imo. I greatly enjoyed SWTOR, but I felt like it needed to be MORE "single-player-ish" rather than LESS. The MMO parts of SWTOR feel tacked on to me, unpolished, and awkward (Really? Still no cross-server LFG? Could Bioware have made it any more difficult and aggravating to find player groups for heroics?) -- sort of the way Mass Effect has multiplayer content added to it as a DLC. It's not bad to have included multiplayer content, but it's hardly this game's focal point.
I would have liked SWTOR far better if it had been set up like Guild Wars 1, allowing you to use multiple companions and/or other players to form groups for instanced questing, story missions, and flashpoints. SWTOR has some great design work, story telling, voice work, and graphics, but structually I wish it had been more like Guild Wars (the B2P business model would have been better for SWTOR, too, imo).
I have to say the game feels more like a "single-player game" than any game I've played since Guild Wars. I think it's because the single-player part sof this game worked great, but the multiplayer parts were kind of "meh." I feel SWTOR would have been better if they had followed the Guild Wars gaming model more closely, not less.
Mike not only misses the point of the ciriticism, he doesn't seem to have some basic facts straight. People were criticizing it before release because they were in beta already playing the game. Closed beta went on for months and this criticism was being made on the beta forums.
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Quite a few people have already knocked one out of the park rebuttingg your opinion Mike, but I'll still add my brief two cents. Outside of the games solocentric stroyline questing that in many instances actually makes grouping with others agonizing (hit the fucking space bar already, gees!) combined with companions that make the need for REAL friends superfulous in most cases, the ACTUAL bitch most of us who do not like how SWTOR turned out and label it a single player game are saying that NOT because of most of the reasons myself and others have mentioned, but maninly because outside the story questing content the games features are all lesser and lackluster versions of game features that have already been done far better in other games. Making everything ouside the solocentric story questing not worth playing.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
No MikeB, its not just a singleplayer rpg, Its a Singleplayer RPG with multiplayer options. This game is in mo way shape or form an MMORPG. It goes against everything that the mmo genre started with. The game is just as linear as any single player rpg. There is no world, not any resemblance of a world, you play zones to make it even worse you play multiple instances of those same zones(atleast you use to when the game had a population). A real MMO will keep the player base spread out over a WORLD, multiple starter cities, plethera of content to keep players spread out. A single player RPG starts everybody in one or 2 zones, merges everyone into one line shortly, and runs multiple instances of those same zones. Its nothing but one big bottle neck, you have to instance it when the devs are to lazy to make content, and actually try to keep players spread out. It is pathetic and sad. Even worse these people are willing to pay 15$ a month to play that garbage.
Do we really need to keep beating this dead horse? Let this cash in on the Star Wars name dissapear. Its not an MMORPG. Its just an Online RPG. White knight chronicals for ps3 is more of an MMO than this game.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore) Now Playing: N/A Worst MMO: FFXIV Favorite MMO: FFXI
Mike Bitton, nice to see this discussed in a mature way. Apity that your efforts will be wasted on the worst elements of the readership/commentatorship here because they operate without reason & operate solely on their biases, they are too blind to even recognise in themselves so whilst there will be people that see the sense of your words, it'll mostly fall on deaf ears.
Looking at your signature, your objectivity on the subject matter comes into question.
People disagreeing with you and Mike are not bad, nor are they being unreasonable, and their arguments are just as valid as yours since what is being discussed is largely more on personal preferences than anything else.
But I suspect you didn't actually read very many of them, no?
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
I don't think that anyone, or at least most people, who call SWTOR an SPRPG means it literally. It's just hyperbole to make a point. We all know that SWTOR is technically an MMORPG.
The problem is that it seems like 80% of the development effort in SWTOR went into stuff that is almost best experienced by a single player. It's no secret that the story, questing, and VO are the main selling points of SWTOR, and where most of the dev effort went. But all these things are kind of a pain to experience cooperatively.
Unless you are at the exact same point in questing as another player, you'll always run into the issue of "Oh, I already did that quest" or "I still have more to do in that quest chain."
Couple this with the extreme instancing and lack of any interesting social hubs, and the game really seems to fall flat in the MMO department. That is why people call it an SPRPG.
This. 100% spot on.
Apparenty the mmorpg staff/writers can't grasp that the criticism is alluding this point , as you stated I'd be surprised if anyone means literlally it's a single player rpg , it's simply that's the easiest way of pointing out it's main fault. That it feels like an srpg with some multi tacked on , and for a sub based mmorpg that's going to cause it to get the grief that I feel , it rightfully deserves.
Your article is simply ridiculous and the players have spoken, just log into SWTOR and compare the amount of people still playing with that of how many copies have sold.
The game is KOTOR, a single player game, it was BUILT EXACTLY like it and all they did was allow more than one person to play in the world at the same time. MMORPGs are not built around a single player enviorment, its built around a multiplayer enviorment.
Even Biowares UPDATES are built around making the community LESS a community. 1.5 million credit upgrades to your ship that allow you to not have to go to one of the few forced player hubs they created...
This is an MMO? Ok, why are the citites empty? Why is it I can go out questing and not see a single person for an hour? Why is it just as much time can go by before I see anyone say anything in world chat? Why does the crafting system suck so much? Why does the economy seem dead? Why does the game lack so many MMORPG elements? Why is it I have to group in mass for RPing gear? How is it I can have a male human Jedi marry a Male Twilek Smuggler and have them give birth to a Female Sith Warrior?
Ill tell you why, because the people implimenting these things are trying hard to throw options at us without knowing what MMOs require. There are more things in game to keep players apart than there are to bring them together and THAT is why right at the END OF BETA they threw together the fleets in order to try to FORCE everyone into one spot to mask the complete lack of MMO aspects the game has.
Some raids and PvP battlegrounds does not an MMO make.
Obviously its a slight, not a factual comment. TOR plays like a solo rpg because the design encourages it. COmpanions, 90% solo content, no real encouragement or requirement to work together, instanced group conten, instanced housingt and empty zones.
What makes the Single Player RPG connection for games like SWTOR is not the lack of group content or the soloability to max level. It is the personal story. In an MMO you are NOT "THE ONE" You are one of a million. The story in an MMO is meant to be an over arching line, not one personally for you. That is what Single player games are for. Personal Story is what takes away from the game being a world instead of a playground. Players can make their own stories in MMO's adventuring solo or grouping. Premade Developer story for a player has absolutely no place in an MMORPG.
So people label it Single player RPG because its all about me me me in every aspect even story. WoW you can level solo to the top. If you want to progress you have to be involved in group functions Raids, or PVP. But WoW does not clutter you with personal story crap that just gets in the way of the world being a world.
Mike Bitton, nice to see this discussed in a mature way. Apity that your efforts will be wasted on the worst elements of the readership/commentatorship here because they operate without reason & operate solely on their biases, they are too blind to even recognise in themselves so whilst there will be people that see the sense of your words, it'll mostly fall on deaf ears.
Looking at your signature, your objectivity on the subject matter comes into question.
People disagreeing with you and Mike are not bad, nor are they being unreasonable, and their arguments are just as valid as yours since what is being discussed is largely more on personal preferences than anything else.
But I suspect you didn't actually read very many of them, no?
This is especially hilarious and true when looking through the comments, the posters who disgree with Mike are giving mature and well explained responses, whereas the defenders are only replying with "Haters gonna hate".
It seems the main issue with SWTOR from the get go is that all the relevent criticism fell on deaf ears.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I don't think that anyone, or at least most people, who call SWTOR an SPRPG means it literally. It's just hyperbole to make a point. We all know that SWTOR is technically an MMORPG.
Yes there is that word....technically.
Quake and Unreal Tournament are also TECHNICALLY an MMORPG...you could play them online, and a LOT of people did it thus making it massive multiplayer...they were still not MMOs. The MMO argument was used AGAINST Guild Wars for many years and thus is most definitely applies to SWTOR as well.
to piggy-back on what everyone is sayign about story - cutscenes should have a small role in MMO's it awful to be on vent/TS/muble/skype with friends and you are forced to either ignore the story or ignore your friends. A lot of times I miss what both are saying.
I have to disagree with Mike for the most part. I used to be a staunch defender of SWTOR, but the facts are the facts. It is KOTOR 3, with group content added.
There is absolutly no reason to group, unless you want to run flashpoints, or operations. Honestly this game would have been better as an offline game with a co-op added to it like left for dead.
Yes there is group content, over half the operations are currently bugged, there is so much that can go wrong with them, same with the flashpoints.
The real problem is that most folks solo there way, then when they get to running flash-points and or operations, they have no idea of what their roll really is in a group.
Sorry but the folks at bioware missed the mark with this one. It really does feel like an rpg single player game. I know I never ran groups until I had 4 50's and wanted to do something other than run repeatable, and there is no reason to run them if your not grouping in the first place.
I will say politely as I can to Mike B, who I do respect very much. We will just have to disagree about how we think about the game. You have valid points, but I think the folks have very valid criticisms about the game. I have chosen just not to play the game any more, ea/bioware not getting any more of my cash, and that decision was based on the game being weak, boring, and lifeless, not to mention no since of community in the game.
Comments
Game is a single player RPG with some co-OP features that EA slapped with the MMO tag so they can trick some people into paying them $15/month. Honestly, its as SIMPLE as that.
The argument that it's a SRPG is simple: the MMO parts feel like add-ons to the basic single-person story mode. The game doesn't feel *designed* as an MMO with an awesome single-person storyline. That's the disconnect, and what annoys so many folks.
Sure, there are plenty of grouping opportunities, and it's not really just a solo game. But it's hard to argue that this isn't KOTOR 3 with multi-player added on, rather than being The Old Republic, a distinctly new MMO. So no, I'm not annoyed when people yell SRPG at all. Bioware certainly wasn't, given how many did just that during the Beta.
Avatars are people too
I agree the zones always felt very small. the loading screens didnt bother me it just felt very confined. Even coruscant which in theory should feel massive do to such a large population actually felt pretty small
Edit: I liked the space combat the problem was how limited your selection was. If your going to do on rails space you should have ALOT of different missions available. I don't recall exactly how many space missions there was but i know at 50 it didnt take me much longer then 1 hour to run them all.
It doesn’t matter if you can solo to level cap or not. The beauty is that we now have options to experience these games how we want. Could MMOs use more group centric content to give those so inclined more challenges to tackle? Maybe. But complaints that an MMO that clearly has group content (whether it has enough of it is subjective) is a singleplayer game because it doesn’t explicitly force you to play with others is just ridiculous.
This is only part of the point that is being made and of itself may be ridiculous.
- Heavy instancing = no others around, I have literally been in game for 20 min and not
seen another player.
- NPC's might as well be a data terminal, the world is sterile.
- Companions eliminate the need for grouping and the game mechanics do not foster
grouping.
- There were areas of the game where co-operative play was needed, but it boiled down to less tham 2% of my time ingame, hardly what you would call grouping.
- Outside of leveling there was no need for grouping (crafting, exploration, PvP) and when leveling it was minimal (more like co-op).
It is just not the leveling that makes this a(n) SPG, it is the sum of its parts. The entire game feels like a co-op spg and not an MMO.
Nice Article..
But you forget to mention that the content is made for 1 PLAYER, if you add several more players this content will be like VERY VERY EASY..So to get any kind of challenge you need to SOLO..I called this the "forced solo effect"..
Othervise..Sure there are some REAL groupquest ..maybe at a ratio 20% group and 80% solo..
If you ...feed the community with soloable content like this, most players WILL skip the hassle of grouping ..thus the MMO fans started to call these games "singleplayer games" with an optional grouping..
it will not matter how long article you write..The outcome of these new ways of developing MMO's to the mainstream masses will always be the same..Players WILL communicate less if it isnt needed, it's rather logic.
My solotion to all this is Dynamic content that scales to the size of the group..or like in AOC you could choose an alternate version of the map that was "group only"..
So making everything instanced and giving everyone NPC companions doesn't contribute at all to the game feeling singleplayer with optional coop? (which is what people toss around).
Man this article is so uninformed its sad.
Mike so misses the point of the debate. He admits playing with friends on a regular basis, so he really doesn't have the proper frame of reference, he should try going in by himself and seeing how worthwhile grouping turns out to be in that scenario.
The game mechanics do not reward or encourage grouping, they merely make it available if the player wants to with no real incentive to actually do so.
In Mike's case, his incentive is to hang with his friends, regardless whether it is the most efficient or practical way to play the game.
In SWTOR if you are spending all of your time grouping, you're probably doing it wrong, it was designed for players to enjoy their personal stories, and not to really create stories by interacting with other players in the game world.
Saying that no modern MMO rpg since WOW launched encourages (or forces if you will) goruping doesn't excuse the fact that for the most part, modern MMO's are all solo oriented experiences (including WOW) and SWTOR is just the worst of the bunch.
Nothing like killing a virtual world than having everyone stop moving to watch their personal story, cut scenes. The only cool part to this was when players in a group would be asked to vote on taking a certain action or not.
Heck, even now in TSW I'm annoyed by how I'm dragged out of the world to watch the mini movies. I have to quickly mute vent to stop the background chatter of my friends and then listen to this story, which although I really quite enjoy, it doesn't make for a proper cooperative MMORPG experience.
Another thing to remember, randoming grouping with someone is not the same thing at all as socialization. No modern MMORPG has sufficient time sinks built into them to permit players the time to actually socialize with each other. Instead they jump in, complete the current objective and then disband, more often than not with nary a word said between them.
That is not socialization folks, and you'd have to have been in the early titles to understand what people like myself are looking for.
Also, it's not enough to say that forced grouping is never coming back. Never say never, I suspect one day people will really grow weary of the current MMO design and the genre will implode in upon itself.
There will huge finanical disasters in the MMO space (if it hasn't already happened with SWTOR) that will really sour investors appetitie for large cash investments into MMORPG's (recent events with 38 Studios haven't helped) and they'll withdraw from the market.
The genre may then arise from the ashes with smaller budgets, new ideas and perhaps a return to a few old ones to give rebirth to a new generation of titles.
While it is a bit of hyperbole to call SWTOR a single player RPG, it's not all that inaccurate either.
Mike is just a bit upset because he's a SWTOR fan and hates to see his game slammed so much even when people are leaving the title in droves for not only this complaint, but many others as well.
TLDR: MMORPG's are about the stories player make interacting between each other (even in a good theme park, see DAOC, circa 2003) and not about the stories the Developers set before them. Those clearly belong in the single player game space.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
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
MMORPG. The home of bandwagon fallacies.
TSW has open zones, TOR has corridors, TSW mobs are tough so even solo you know a group would be good. TOR you can steamroll everything do there's no need to get anyone else, plus you also have npc companions to make it even easier. TSW has open questing, TOR has the usual hubs.
It's those and many other reasons why TOR plays like a single player game, not just the grouping requirements.
Nail on the head with this one ...
GW1 was called a CORPG for a reason. TOR feels the same way.
It is not about group content or group quests, but there is NOTHING to distinguish the group from other players. There is no difference if you complete the flashpoints and other things with a random PUG or with a "GUILD". Taking more players to a quest is NOT GROUP CONTENT.
F.e in EVE (the game I have the most experience in) group content is a whole different level than single player content. It does not mean running missions with friends (the equivalent of TOR flashpoints). It means acting as part of a larger entity, feeling that you are part of something bigger, having goals that are clearly above a single player.
The biggest selling point of TOR (the personal hero story) is its biggest flaw. You cannot make everybody in the world a hero because then nobody is one. You have to separate the hero from the other heroes to make that story unique. This will never work with a live and breathing world.
This poster has it EXACTLY right, imo. I greatly enjoyed SWTOR, but I felt like it needed to be MORE "single-player-ish" rather than LESS. The MMO parts of SWTOR feel tacked on to me, unpolished, and awkward (Really? Still no cross-server LFG? Could Bioware have made it any more difficult and aggravating to find player groups for heroics?) -- sort of the way Mass Effect has multiplayer content added to it as a DLC. It's not bad to have included multiplayer content, but it's hardly this game's focal point.
I would have liked SWTOR far better if it had been set up like Guild Wars 1, allowing you to use multiple companions and/or other players to form groups for instanced questing, story missions, and flashpoints. SWTOR has some great design work, story telling, voice work, and graphics, but structually I wish it had been more like Guild Wars (the B2P business model would have been better for SWTOR, too, imo).
I have to say the game feels more like a "single-player game" than any game I've played since Guild Wars. I think it's because the single-player part sof this game worked great, but the multiplayer parts were kind of "meh." I feel SWTOR would have been better if they had followed the Guild Wars gaming model more closely, not less.
Mike not only misses the point of the ciriticism, he doesn't seem to have some basic facts straight. People were criticizing it before release because they were in beta already playing the game. Closed beta went on for months and this criticism was being made on the beta forums.
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
Quite a few people have already knocked one out of the park rebuttingg your opinion Mike, but I'll still add my brief two cents. Outside of the games solocentric stroyline questing that in many instances actually makes grouping with others agonizing (hit the fucking space bar already, gees!) combined with companions that make the need for REAL friends superfulous in most cases, the ACTUAL bitch most of us who do not like how SWTOR turned out and label it a single player game are saying that NOT because of most of the reasons myself and others have mentioned, but maninly because outside the story questing content the games features are all lesser and lackluster versions of game features that have already been done far better in other games. Making everything ouside the solocentric story questing not worth playing.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Mike Bitton, nice to see this discussed in a mature way. [mod edit]
No MikeB, its not just a singleplayer rpg, Its a Singleplayer RPG with multiplayer options. This game is in mo way shape or form an MMORPG. It goes against everything that the mmo genre started with. The game is just as linear as any single player rpg. There is no world, not any resemblance of a world, you play zones to make it even worse you play multiple instances of those same zones(atleast you use to when the game had a population). A real MMO will keep the player base spread out over a WORLD, multiple starter cities, plethera of content to keep players spread out. A single player RPG starts everybody in one or 2 zones, merges everyone into one line shortly, and runs multiple instances of those same zones. Its nothing but one big bottle neck, you have to instance it when the devs are to lazy to make content, and actually try to keep players spread out. It is pathetic and sad. Even worse these people are willing to pay 15$ a month to play that garbage.
Do we really need to keep beating this dead horse? Let this cash in on the Star Wars name dissapear. Its not an MMORPG. Its just an Online RPG. White knight chronicals for ps3 is more of an MMO than this game.
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Looking at your signature, your objectivity on the subject matter comes into question.
People disagreeing with you and Mike are not bad, nor are they being unreasonable, and their arguments are just as valid as yours since what is being discussed is largely more on personal preferences than anything else.
But I suspect you didn't actually read very many of them, no?
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"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
This. 100% spot on.
Apparenty the mmorpg staff/writers can't grasp that the criticism is alluding this point , as you stated I'd be surprised if anyone means literlally it's a single player rpg , it's simply that's the easiest way of pointing out it's main fault. That it feels like an srpg with some multi tacked on , and for a sub based mmorpg that's going to cause it to get the grief that I feel , it rightfully deserves.
"This statement is simply ridiculous"
Your article is simply ridiculous and the players have spoken, just log into SWTOR and compare the amount of people still playing with that of how many copies have sold.
The game is KOTOR, a single player game, it was BUILT EXACTLY like it and all they did was allow more than one person to play in the world at the same time. MMORPGs are not built around a single player enviorment, its built around a multiplayer enviorment.
Even Biowares UPDATES are built around making the community LESS a community. 1.5 million credit upgrades to your ship that allow you to not have to go to one of the few forced player hubs they created...
This is an MMO? Ok, why are the citites empty? Why is it I can go out questing and not see a single person for an hour? Why is it just as much time can go by before I see anyone say anything in world chat? Why does the crafting system suck so much? Why does the economy seem dead? Why does the game lack so many MMORPG elements? Why is it I have to group in mass for RPing gear? How is it I can have a male human Jedi marry a Male Twilek Smuggler and have them give birth to a Female Sith Warrior?
Ill tell you why, because the people implimenting these things are trying hard to throw options at us without knowing what MMOs require. There are more things in game to keep players apart than there are to bring them together and THAT is why right at the END OF BETA they threw together the fleets in order to try to FORCE everyone into one spot to mask the complete lack of MMO aspects the game has.
Some raids and PvP battlegrounds does not an MMO make.
Obviously its a slight, not a factual comment. TOR plays like a solo rpg because the design encourages it. COmpanions, 90% solo content, no real encouragement or requirement to work together, instanced group conten, instanced housingt and empty zones.
What makes the Single Player RPG connection for games like SWTOR is not the lack of group content or the soloability to max level. It is the personal story. In an MMO you are NOT "THE ONE" You are one of a million. The story in an MMO is meant to be an over arching line, not one personally for you. That is what Single player games are for. Personal Story is what takes away from the game being a world instead of a playground. Players can make their own stories in MMO's adventuring solo or grouping. Premade Developer story for a player has absolutely no place in an MMORPG.
So people label it Single player RPG because its all about me me me in every aspect even story. WoW you can level solo to the top. If you want to progress you have to be involved in group functions Raids, or PVP. But WoW does not clutter you with personal story crap that just gets in the way of the world being a world.
This is especially hilarious and true when looking through the comments, the posters who disgree with Mike are giving mature and well explained responses, whereas the defenders are only replying with "Haters gonna hate".
It seems the main issue with SWTOR from the get go is that all the relevent criticism fell on deaf ears.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Yes there is that word....technically.
Quake and Unreal Tournament are also TECHNICALLY an MMORPG...you could play them online, and a LOT of people did it thus making it massive multiplayer...they were still not MMOs. The MMO argument was used AGAINST Guild Wars for many years and thus is most definitely applies to SWTOR as well.
I also think it's a ridiculous assessment.
I did quite a lot of grouping, much of it on the fly, when I played the game.
I did more grouping in SWToR than my many years in LOTRO.
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to piggy-back on what everyone is sayign about story - cutscenes should have a small role in MMO's it awful to be on vent/TS/muble/skype with friends and you are forced to either ignore the story or ignore your friends. A lot of times I miss what both are saying.
I have to disagree with Mike for the most part. I used to be a staunch defender of SWTOR, but the facts are the facts. It is KOTOR 3, with group content added.
There is absolutly no reason to group, unless you want to run flashpoints, or operations. Honestly this game would have been better as an offline game with a co-op added to it like left for dead.
Yes there is group content, over half the operations are currently bugged, there is so much that can go wrong with them, same with the flashpoints.
The real problem is that most folks solo there way, then when they get to running flash-points and or operations, they have no idea of what their roll really is in a group.
Sorry but the folks at bioware missed the mark with this one. It really does feel like an rpg single player game. I know I never ran groups until I had 4 50's and wanted to do something other than run repeatable, and there is no reason to run them if your not grouping in the first place.
I will say politely as I can to Mike B, who I do respect very much. We will just have to disagree about how we think about the game. You have valid points, but I think the folks have very valid criticisms about the game. I have chosen just not to play the game any more, ea/bioware not getting any more of my cash, and that decision was based on the game being weak, boring, and lifeless, not to mention no since of community in the game.