SWTOR is unique because it is literally the only MMO that actually gives a damn when it comes to the story.
Look at WoW / GW2 / RIFT etc. Just awful stories you'll normally find in fanfic.net.
I agree they did a great job with most of the stories (and I think they did a great job with combat, personally), but as VengeSunsoar said... god, what a restrictive game. It really seemed like Bioware was just too full of themselves, and didn't even bother looking into what makes a good MMORPG that people play for a long time.
Instead they just built this single player game, with several linear stories. The world design is unbelievably confining. Basically you follow a path through, out the other side, and to the next planet where you repeat the process.
I seriously don't see a single thing SWtOR has in common with SWG, either, beyond the license. SWG was the consummate sandbox, it had all of a sandbox's traditional weaknesses, but really nailed the strengths.
SWtOR is the consummate themepark-- literally laid out like Disneyland, with narrow paths you must travel between 'events'. You don't really even play your character-- you play one of Bioware's characters.
SWTOR is a themepark and it has nothing to do with SWG other than the setting.
Why don't other MMOs follow SWTOR's leveling model? Cause you have to design a game with that in mind.
SWTOR earned 139 million in 2013 and 106 million in Jan/2014- Sept/2014 so the market is fairly large.
Hopefully more companies realize that.
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
Originally posted by nicename Never had I found leveling as fun as SWTOR why won't other games follow this model? And yes I did hear of SWG which did something similar years ago.
I assume you mean story driven leveling. SWTOR was good but I personally find TSW did it a bit better. ESO would be 3rd than GW2. I have not played a MMO outside those 4 where I could really tell you much about the stories, they where so dull they couldn't keep my attention and they where mostly a weak excuse to push you towards the next quest hub. Those 4 are the same but they execute it a bit better than the rest.
Now if this kind of story driven experience is good for MMO's or not is a different discussion. I'm not rating the value of the game overall just the enjoyment I got out of the story part of it.
Why the hell people keep comparing SWTOR with TSW in terms of story?
One is a sci fi based and the other draws heavily from H.P. Lovecraft.. They both have different style of presentation and are not even close in terms of lore, history and characters.
Remind me how much SWTOR cost to make and why no other MMORPG should follow SWTOR . SWTOR developer once said that they can't build big pack like the release one because the cost to make .
I don't play SWTOR even after it went F2P , but all i hear people phase about SWTOR or TSW is the awesome story . Rarely about gameplay .
Originally posted by mbrodie Guess you're trying to troll or something but swtor and swg were nothing a like when it came to leveling... the only thing I could imagine has made it so enjoyable for you is the theme because you love star wars or something... other than that and too many cutscenes swtor is just like another other on the rails theme park quest mmo
Not really. He talks about FUN. And definitively Swtor is one of most fun games to play and level of course. Great deal because of great voicing , cinematics, choices, ... only game where as altholic listen nearly to all quests with all of my alts (8 maxed out, resting 8 playing from time to time). In any other game, Wow including, after few alts I just accept quest without bother to read. There is also nothing to listen to.
I think SWTOR was the first of the AAA MMORPGs to bring the story to the forefront with these games. TSW did similar and I find both had their share of great stories.
The newer planets (Makeb and Rishi) have dropped the full VO for side quests and only really feature it for the main story, which is fine for me.
But to answer the question, I just don't think there are that many good writers out there. Bioware had some great writers as did Funcom (for TSW), but story doesn't appeal to everyone (as you can see from the replies in this thread). Some prefer the old box of text.
Loved the story(s) of SWTOR. Found much of the quest objectives to be pretty much the same as any other "level based" mmo. However, once the stories were over, there was not much unique about SWTOR. There was the typical "end game" tedious and boring daily quests. Or, the tedious and generally boring PvP matches. Or, the tedious and boring "raid" content (after running them the third plus time through). Point is, story is great, but you need a lot more of the same or something unique when the story ends.
But SWTOR had some of the worst PVE content since WAR, where every mob was exactly the same. (Oh they looked different, sure, but they all played identically meaning there was no gameplay variety while leveling.)
And the cutscenes were a huge negative in group PVE, where you really don't want to wait for someone to finish watching that cutscene. (This also holds true of the handful of cutscenes in WOW grouping.) Basically the storyline can happen during the gameplay, but if it ever forces players to wait (either via cutscene or via long-winded pre-battle dialog) then it's detracting from gameplay quality and harming the overall experience. In some cases, any long-winded dialog can take place in solo PVE which lets you have dialog-rich characters to fight in the world, but without hurting gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by nicename Never had I found leveling as fun as SWTOR why won't other games follow this model? And yes I did hear of SWG which did something similar years ago.
You mean do boring, mundane quests and spend an hour just trying to fight through trash mobs to get to your next quest point in between being eligible for the next story quest? No thanks.
Originally posted by nicename Never had I found leveling as fun as SWTOR why won't other games follow this model? And yes I did hear of SWG which did something similar years ago.
This thread is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. What is it about SWTOR's leveling model that you like and is different from most other MMORPGs?
I think what he's saying is "instead of just having your character run around doing tasks and things that are not fun in order to get xp, make it so that the player plays a game with story, quests etc that are more immersive and then have the xp and leveling as you move along.
Of course this is subjective.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Personally I consider SWTOR leveling to be one of the most tedious I've ever experienced. Running from quest hub to quest hub in a very static world is OK with 1st character but after that it becomes really tiresome. Dark side main stories were really fun and well written though and I also quite liked flash points and raids.
My best leveling experience was in TSW and I really enjoyed it's quests and dark atmosphere.
Agreed, TSW best themepark leveling I've experienced too. OP, if you liked SWTOR you'll love The Secret World. SWTOR is kid stuff in comparison.
You must be kidding... Swtor is completely different game. I very much liked swtor but nearly hated tsw, espacially its terrible combat, animations and cluttered world. The only good, or rather great feature of tsw are investigation missions. You can argue that tsw has better story but i remember at least some of quests felt like tv soap opera and didnt like them much.
I was only referring to the questing, which is what you do to level in themepark mmos.
Originally posted by nicename Never had I found leveling as fun as SWTOR why won't other games follow this model? And yes I did hear of SWG which did something similar years ago.
You do know that SWTOR is about the most easy mode mmo out there? Right??
They story, yeah kinda good, but once I went through both sides each to max level and saw that theres only like 4 or 5 storylines per planet you go to....all I wanted was to bypass all the side missions....Why I loved when they did that 12x exp event.
But what works for them , won't work for other games......The sense of accomplishing any thing is kinda missing.
You know, maybe they just should have made KotOR 3 and added multiplayer to it....because that's what SWTOR is anyways.
Remind me how much SWTOR cost to make and why no other MMORPG should follow SWTOR . SWTOR developer once said that they can't build big pack like the release one because the cost to make .
I don't play SWTOR even after it went F2P , but all i hear people phase about SWTOR or TSW is the awesome story . Rarely about gameplay .
Yeah so much this.....Kinda like how sometimes great books don't translate into great movies.
SWTOR is a linear questing game,you wish others would do the same well only like 99.9% are already doing the same so not sure where your gaming has been but definitely not in mmos.
Every single bit of SWTOR is a simplistic design,there is nothing i would keep if i was to rework the design.Even the crafting was done badly well my opinion of course as i am sure there are people playing and liking what they get,i just have much higher standards for game design.
I look at professional game studios and expect game design that is above what any forum user could muster up.
The very first wave of MMOs already did a LOT really well,all devs after had to do was tweak them and add in some missing ideas.
I dont want to get int oan argument of EQ2 and Wow going the hand holding route because obviously tons of players like that format,however i will fault all of them for NOT improving on what they started.Ok so you decided lienar questing was your deal,well after 5 or 8 years how have you evolved it.What we are seeing are devs dumb down what was already a simplistic design and doing nothing to improve it.
Anyone paying attention to the industry has seen ONE focus and that seems to be the EASIEST lowest possible effort and that is PVP.Anyone can just take a menu system and flag players for pvp,how is that improving game play or your linear questing.The other focus has been end game stats,again how much effort does it take a developer to code in a few lines for stats,seriously you dont fund a multi million dollar operation to do a few thousand dollars in effort.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
If you mean by far the most restrictive linear MMORPG I've ever played with zones that have single entry and exit points and you must finish one planet before moving to the next. Oh god absolutely not. That was completely totally horrible. Actually while some parts of the game were fun, everything just felt too restrictive. Even the housing, only place certain items at certain points, Egads, way way way too restrictive.
edit - agree with Mr. Brodie. I personally did not like swg, found it far too boring but the leveling was nothing like swtor at all. I can't think of anything similar. Other than pressing buttons that is.
I agree except on the story part.It only took me about 5 waves of story to see how little effort and how generic it was.Every story was a red and green access room,pretty lame design right there.Then EVERY single story from both evil and good side was a conspiracy theory,cmon maybe once or twice maybe even 3x but every time pfft a snail moving across the ground put in a 100x more effort and thought into it.
I could have accepted it a tad more if it was the dark side full of conspiracy and over taking each leader but not the good side copying the exact same type of story design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
First playthrough is good. Replayablity is pretty damn awefull.
Honestly I'm starting to look at class/player stories as a bad thing in MMO's. SWTOR made 8 different class stories, 8 large protions of the game locked off from 7/8 of your players. I'd realy prefer if the developer would focus more on making the world we "live" in feel alive than anything else.
The planets, especially the levelling planets feels locked in time. We kick empire/republic butt pretty much where ever we go during our class quest, yes the planets never change. There's still an abundance of the opposing faction out there shooting at us even after we "win" the planet. Maybe we're not supposed to come back to these planets after we level past them, but I'm just not sure how well that design works.
Another thing is, it pretty much locks out the option of making new classes. Think about it. Making a new class including story would cost a good chunk of cash andnone of their current players would be able to play any of that content. To play it they would have to level up a new character.
Even a hugely popular mmo as WoW stopped classquests. Classic WoW had a few, but TBC had none, exept for the druid flightform quest. Fairly sure I remember reading a yellow post (at the (pre-?)launch of TBC) where Blizzard stated that from a cost/benefit POV it just didn't make sense developing content only a tiny fraction of the playerbase could play.
First playthrough is good. Replayablity is pretty damn awefull.
Honestly I'm starting to look at class/player stories as a bad thing in MMO's. SWTOR made 8 different class stories, 8 large protions of the game locked off from 7/8 of your players. I'd realy prefer if the developer would focus more on making the world we "live" in feel alive than anything else.
I love the idea of class stories, but only when they're little events that pop up every once in a great while. Kind of how WoW used to have that island where Warriors would be sent around level 20, as a kind of right of passage. That was great-- felt like there was this little corner of the world that was just for you and your "kind". :P
But these class stories that span the length of the game... ugh. Please, get out of my face, game-- just let me play the world.
Originally posted by nicename Never had I found leveling as fun as SWTOR why won't other games follow this model? And yes I did hear of SWG which did something similar years ago.
Kinda different, SWG blatantly told the current database to get out or adapt when trying to lure in the WoW masses by converting it into a themepark.
When the servers were barren - you were lucky to see 60 people on a server in primetime after that fateful patch- they needed something to generate money with. So they invented the card lottery gamepacks, while keeping the 100% subscription model.
SWTOR introduced a F2P model while severely restricting this gameplay to the point it was unplayable and forcing players to either uninstall or switch the subscription model.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
swtor is a single player RPG with multiplayer elements thrown in set in a shared world space.. I don't know.. if you enjoy that sort of thing it's fine, personally I got bored after around the 4th planet, just couldn't keep my interest.. just too simplistic.
Your typical mmos these days are simple things meant for young console player types, sad to say.
I recently went back to eq2 to get a more oldschool mmo feel to scratch that itch.. it's f2p too so no biggy
Comments
SWTOR is a themepark and it has nothing to do with SWG other than the setting.
Why don't other MMOs follow SWTOR's leveling model? Cause you have to design a game with that in mind.
SWTOR earned 139 million in 2013 and 106 million in Jan/2014- Sept/2014 so the market is fairly large.
Hopefully more companies realize that.
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
Why the hell people keep comparing SWTOR with TSW in terms of story?
One is a sci fi based and the other draws heavily from H.P. Lovecraft.. They both have different style of presentation and are not even close in terms of lore, history and characters.
Remind me how much SWTOR cost to make and why no other MMORPG should follow SWTOR . SWTOR developer once said that they can't build big pack like the release one because the cost to make .
I don't play SWTOR even after it went F2P , but all i hear people phase about SWTOR or TSW is the awesome story . Rarely about gameplay .
Not really. He talks about FUN. And definitively Swtor is one of most fun games to play and level of course. Great deal because of great voicing , cinematics, choices, ... only game where as altholic listen nearly to all quests with all of my alts (8 maxed out, resting 8 playing from time to time). In any other game, Wow including, after few alts I just accept quest without bother to read. There is also nothing to listen to.
I think SWTOR was the first of the AAA MMORPGs to bring the story to the forefront with these games. TSW did similar and I find both had their share of great stories.
The newer planets (Makeb and Rishi) have dropped the full VO for side quests and only really feature it for the main story, which is fine for me.
But to answer the question, I just don't think there are that many good writers out there. Bioware had some great writers as did Funcom (for TSW), but story doesn't appeal to everyone (as you can see from the replies in this thread). Some prefer the old box of text.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Storylines are great for solo PVE.
But SWTOR had some of the worst PVE content since WAR, where every mob was exactly the same. (Oh they looked different, sure, but they all played identically meaning there was no gameplay variety while leveling.)
And the cutscenes were a huge negative in group PVE, where you really don't want to wait for someone to finish watching that cutscene. (This also holds true of the handful of cutscenes in WOW grouping.) Basically the storyline can happen during the gameplay, but if it ever forces players to wait (either via cutscene or via long-winded pre-battle dialog) then it's detracting from gameplay quality and harming the overall experience. In some cases, any long-winded dialog can take place in solo PVE which lets you have dialog-rich characters to fight in the world, but without hurting gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You mean do boring, mundane quests and spend an hour just trying to fight through trash mobs to get to your next quest point in between being eligible for the next story quest? No thanks.
I think what he's saying is "instead of just having your character run around doing tasks and things that are not fun in order to get xp, make it so that the player plays a game with story, quests etc that are more immersive and then have the xp and leveling as you move along.
Of course this is subjective.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I was only referring to the questing, which is what you do to level in themepark mmos.
You do know that SWTOR is about the most easy mode mmo out there? Right??
They story, yeah kinda good, but once I went through both sides each to max level and saw that theres only like 4 or 5 storylines per planet you go to....all I wanted was to bypass all the side missions....Why I loved when they did that 12x exp event.
But what works for them , won't work for other games......The sense of accomplishing any thing is kinda missing.
You know, maybe they just should have made KotOR 3 and added multiplayer to it....because that's what SWTOR is anyways.
Yeah so much this.....Kinda like how sometimes great books don't translate into great movies.
SWTOR is a linear questing game,you wish others would do the same well only like 99.9% are already doing the same so not sure where your gaming has been but definitely not in mmos.
Every single bit of SWTOR is a simplistic design,there is nothing i would keep if i was to rework the design.Even the crafting was done badly well my opinion of course as i am sure there are people playing and liking what they get,i just have much higher standards for game design.
I look at professional game studios and expect game design that is above what any forum user could muster up.
The very first wave of MMOs already did a LOT really well,all devs after had to do was tweak them and add in some missing ideas.
I dont want to get int oan argument of EQ2 and Wow going the hand holding route because obviously tons of players like that format,however i will fault all of them for NOT improving on what they started.Ok so you decided lienar questing was your deal,well after 5 or 8 years how have you evolved it.What we are seeing are devs dumb down what was already a simplistic design and doing nothing to improve it.
Anyone paying attention to the industry has seen ONE focus and that seems to be the EASIEST lowest possible effort and that is PVP.Anyone can just take a menu system and flag players for pvp,how is that improving game play or your linear questing.The other focus has been end game stats,again how much effort does it take a developer to code in a few lines for stats,seriously you dont fund a multi million dollar operation to do a few thousand dollars in effort.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I agree except on the story part.It only took me about 5 waves of story to see how little effort and how generic it was.Every story was a red and green access room,pretty lame design right there.Then EVERY single story from both evil and good side was a conspiracy theory,cmon maybe once or twice maybe even 3x but every time pfft a snail moving across the ground put in a 100x more effort and thought into it.
I could have accepted it a tad more if it was the dark side full of conspiracy and over taking each leader but not the good side copying the exact same type of story design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
First playthrough is good. Replayablity is pretty damn awefull.
Honestly I'm starting to look at class/player stories as a bad thing in MMO's. SWTOR made 8 different class stories, 8 large protions of the game locked off from 7/8 of your players. I'd realy prefer if the developer would focus more on making the world we "live" in feel alive than anything else.
The planets, especially the levelling planets feels locked in time. We kick empire/republic butt pretty much where ever we go during our class quest, yes the planets never change. There's still an abundance of the opposing faction out there shooting at us even after we "win" the planet. Maybe we're not supposed to come back to these planets after we level past them, but I'm just not sure how well that design works.
Another thing is, it pretty much locks out the option of making new classes. Think about it. Making a new class including story would cost a good chunk of cash andnone of their current players would be able to play any of that content. To play it they would have to level up a new character.
Even a hugely popular mmo as WoW stopped classquests. Classic WoW had a few, but TBC had none, exept for the druid flightform quest. Fairly sure I remember reading a yellow post (at the (pre-?)launch of TBC) where Blizzard stated that from a cost/benefit POV it just didn't make sense developing content only a tiny fraction of the playerbase could play.
I love the idea of class stories, but only when they're little events that pop up every once in a great while. Kind of how WoW used to have that island where Warriors would be sent around level 20, as a kind of right of passage. That was great-- felt like there was this little corner of the world that was just for you and your "kind". :P
But these class stories that span the length of the game... ugh. Please, get out of my face, game-- just let me play the world.
Kinda different, SWG blatantly told the current database to get out or adapt when trying to lure in the WoW masses by converting it into a themepark.
When the servers were barren - you were lucky to see 60 people on a server in primetime after that fateful patch- they needed something to generate money with. So they invented the card lottery gamepacks, while keeping the 100% subscription model.
SWTOR introduced a F2P model while severely restricting this gameplay to the point it was unplayable and forcing players to either uninstall or switch the subscription model.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
swtor is a single player RPG with multiplayer elements thrown in set in a shared world space.. I don't know.. if you enjoy that sort of thing it's fine, personally I got bored after around the 4th planet, just couldn't keep my interest.. just too simplistic.
Your typical mmos these days are simple things meant for young console player types, sad to say.
I recently went back to eq2 to get a more oldschool mmo feel to scratch that itch.. it's f2p too so no biggy