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Is this still a boring hub game?
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
I really loved the combat in the game, there was a lot of great content and obviously it had a nice art style. However my biggest problem and why I quit was because the world was dead, it never felt like a world because of the stupid fleet stations they added in beta. All it ended up doing what making everyone stand in the stations and do BGs and instances over and over.
Did they ever flesh out the world and do more with the PVP within the world or is it still the same boring hub based thing?
Such a shame because the two cities on Tatooine were just calling out to be the main hubs of the game, if only they connected them to the rest of the planet and did something with PVP there.
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I hated the stations as well. Last time I came back (few months ago), the stations were still fairly much the hub (sadly).
That said, most functions could be accessed from other locations as well and many planets were surprisingly busy.
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The sad part is that SWTOR's best parts; the personal story, VO's and companion stories are the parts they just cast aside once the game went live with no chance at all being developed on once the game went F2P.
After the ESO fiasco, I subbed to SW-TOR as a "kill time" game. I had enough sense not to buy the game and subscribe initially. Part of that initial decision was largely because BioWare games are always the same proposition: STORY UBER ALLES. A person gets to fight, make a few decisions about his build, and choose what order to do side-quests... and choose whether to turn left or right to end up at point B as you run from point A, but always ending up at point B no matter what.
BioWare games are essentially brainless... which makes them perfect to kill time, but not much good for anything else.
Anyway, I don't find the game so much of a "quest-hub game" as I do a "chain-hub game". That is, you get quest #1 that requires you to go from point A to B, the travel time being part of the deliberate timesink, and enroute you'll pick up quests #2, #3, and #4. In the process of doing those quests, you'll pick up quests #5, #6, #7, and #8. Those quests will run you around an area and one of them will ultimately send you to some other area where you can pick up even more quests... in effect, SW-TOR is a "distributed" quest-hub system.
But that is no different than most of the games being launched these days... ESO, for instance, claims it has all of this explorability, but if you pay attention it's very clear that Zenimax used the same approach: a distributed quest-hub.
So far, however, while I have seen the preponderance of people on my server at the Republic and Empire fleet hubs (typically around 150 on-line at a time at those locations), I have seen plenty of other players on planet surfaces, too. Granted, my characters are not high level; I'm playing four characters simultaneously; two Republic and two Empire, all four different classes; and my highest level character is only level twenty; but during prime time the player population on those planets is always over 100.
If there is a real problem in my mind, it's the built-in travel timesinks. The shortest distance between two points in SW-TOR is not a straight line because invariably you can't go from point A to point B in a straight line. The main map and the mini-map are very poor at showing the unscalable cliffs, impassable walls, and unreachable objective areas because of obstacles; I have in some cases spent an hour, easily, just trying to figure out how to get to a questing area. The paths and trails shown on the maps are very often inadequate... or don't show enough of the route, until discovered, to know that the route you're on doesn't go where you want to go.
So you waste time going nowhere...
There is a sameness between class skills and quest requirements, and voice-overs ad nauseum, so -- yeah -- it can get boring.
But... in the time since their disastrous launch, they've fixed a lot of things. I haven't encountered one bug yet (other than I never get a clean shutdown when I exit the game for the day; I always have to use the Task Manager). Given the extraordinary number of bugs I ran into with ESO, not seeing any bugs in SW-TOR is a huge relief.
The game has changed very little, though they have added additional content. The new content comes at a slow pace, as you'd imagine with their hybrid model. A lot of attention gets spent on the "Cartel Shop", like Rift does. They can get money quickly with cosmetic options they add, so real content and upgrades take a back seat. It's an unfortunate reality of the situation.
That being said, the game still has a lot to offer and the personal story aspect is great. I personally enjoy the cutscenes and cinematics. And the combat is pretty good, keeping with the feel and flow of the Star Wars universe. It's not Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-CU was the only good version of that), but it's fun at least in the short term.
As far as the "hub" aspect, it does exist. It's not a game-breaker, but I do wish they would have come up with some other way to accomplish what they wanted. However, in their defense, the "space station hub" is very authentic to the Star Wars universe and what you'd see in the movies. So, making some central gathering places does actually work. Just try not to let it bother you as a game mechanic.
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this is true
It is not the only game with this problem, many themeparks makes accessing dungeons, PvP and so on easy from certain towns (or whatever) while the rewards of the open world gets useless once you hit max level.
It creates large dead zones, but it isn't the themeparks in itself that is the problem, it is how the level mechanics work in the games, the less focus on open world gameplay and the fact that many lazy players like it this way and lobbies for it.
Well you do have to pick up your daily / weekly missions from the fleet , but we have many new daily / weekly areas now , so you can go to a few places at max level. The introduction of Galactic Strongholds might change it all though , but that is worrying people as they want the fleet chat to be accessible in their Strongholds. Horses for courses and all that. So yeah the Strongholds might split up the community once it's released. You might like the new moons and planets OP , there's Oricon , Makeb , CZ-198 , to name a few new ones.
So it still is almost an end-game hub MMO , but not totally.
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I have been seeing players on mid-level planets as well. I am actually surprised at the population given comments on many forums. I send my trooper to ord for the 3 daily and 9 coms and always see players with new characters questing around.
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Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
since when do some people care so much about HOW they get their damn kill 10 rats quests into their quest log.
does it really matter if the rats killing progress is a X of Y number or a progress bar, and if the quest floats "dynamically" into your quest log, without a hub? (*cough* dynamic event*cough*)
The population really thins out though, once you get past Tatooine. Like maybe 20-30 people on a planet at peak hours, single digits at the lowest (I was just on Voss and there were 6 people)R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
The population really thins out though, once you get past Tatooine. Like maybe 20-30 people on a planet at peak hours, single digits at the lowest (I was just on Voss and there were 6 people)
Some planets are more populated than others. With the huge number of planets available in the game along with the fleets and all the instanced content that seperates people that is bound to happen large population or not.Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
People nowdays level up in so many different ways and since most of them have already ran the quests it's not common to see much action outside the hubs.
Personally I love just sitting in the hubs and queueing for the activity of my pleasing. The crave for "open world" can be filled with looking for datacrons and completing the class quests.