Bioware Has a Plan for The Old Republic End-Game

[Thick]

This game was already dead to me when they said they "balanced" Jedi. Jedi don't balance; Jedi are demigods!

Haha, never thought of that, but you have such a point. How do you propose to balance foot soldiers with elite, magical swordsmen who ostensibly could take on a whole platoon of foot soldiers with little trouble. It'd be like balancing go-carts with an ATAT, if you'll pardon the nerd. It's the challenge one takes when working with a property like Star Wars.

I'm not particularly worried about the end-game of a game that hasn't had a begin-game. When the thing drops, it will all be new content, not to mention the inevitable adjustment period with classes and bugs and all that comes with a new game. Eventually new content is the only end-game that matters.

But anyways, slogging through dialogue trees, even spoken dialogue trees, bores me. So touting that as a feature only serves to disinterest me.

And another thing, I don't keep up with such things, but I thought I heard somewhere that BioWare wasn't going to be comparing itself to WoW that much, and focus instead on just making the best game they can. I respected them for that. If you really want to bring in WoW hardcore for comparison, then imagine people who will spend at least six hours a night, six nights a week to steamroll over the content you've just spent all your time designing and programming, and inside a month they are shrieking, "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBORED! MOAR NOW!"

 

[Savagezion]

I just hope that they actually plan on centering the game around the end game content as that is where, I feel, most MMOs go wrong. Usually end game content is tacked on like "uhhh, we need something for you max level guys... here what about this? It should keep you busy." Which is usually repetative non-rewarding crap grind for little to no real payoff. Referencing WoW here and so many others. This is not end game content. It's end game drivel.

I think Anarchy Online held a hidden gem in it's territory control system if you saved it for end game content and not lay it out scattered in level ranges in the game. There is a good structure there for never ending end game content where the players could influence the world. It is just not really executed with a full follow through. It always seemed they stopped mid-swing. But that structure alone gave me confidence that maybe someday an MMO developer would pick up on the idea. I mean if I can anyone else can. Mythic got close with WHO. Maybe Bioware has something here.

 

[Savagezion]

This game was already dead to me when they said they "balanced" Jedi. Jedi don't balance; Jedi are demigods!

Haha, never thought of that, but you have such a point. How do you propose to balance foot soldiers with elite, magical swordsmen who ostensibly could take on a whole platoon of foot soldiers with little trouble.

Well, Star Wars Galaxies, did the Jedi business in a terrible way. Also realise that 80% of your fanbase is going to want to be a Jedi. Especially, if they are demigods compared to every other class in the game. This goes out of sync with the Star Wars universe where Jedi's are rare. Even with them balanced Jedi's are going to be all over the place.

Additionally, Luke is not a demigod. Sure, he can take out troopers, but against almost everything else he tends to be a puss. If you see all these little Jedi's running around in the game just look at them as a Jedi uprising and they all are in training. Basically, suspension of disbelief to a slight degree for the sake of gameplay. Personally I like all the classes. My first I would make would either be a bounty hunter or a smuggler.

 

[Callate]

"What about the high-level end game?"

"We have a plan."

...

"And?"

"That's it. We have a plan. A plan exists. The matter has been taken into consideration. Steps may or may not be taken in response to the issue. At some time in the future. Maybe."

"Ah. Okay. Soooo... Carry on, then, I guess?"

"We plan to."

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

If it has 0 pvp then I'll try it for a month. If it has any kind of pvp then it will fail like all other mmos that have pvp (except guild wars, and that has suck ass pve).

 

[warmonkey]

If it has 0 pvp then I'll try it for a month. If it has any kind of pvp then it will fail like all other mmos that have pvp (except guild wars, and that has suck ass pve).

lolwut?
That makes no sense at all, PvP isn't what makes MMOs boring, PvP isn't what every MMO is copying from WoW over and over. PvP is the only thing that will get me to *play* an MMO (and PvE will get me to *not play* an MMO.)

This announcement leads me to believe I'll be taking a massive pass on this. I only have so much free time. I'm not going to start paying for a game where I will either have to spend ALL my free time playing OR fall 'behind' and never be competitive with others.

No thanks, I'd rather go play checkers. Or some other game that I can put away and pick up at will without ever having to "catch up" to other people. The very concept of having to play "catch up" and grind away before I can participate with others is just an anathema to what I want out of a game.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the post-level cap content will mostly consist of repeating the same dungeon once a week with the same large group on a schedule hoping for a rare drop.

lol precisely.
ohhhh yaaaayy.... innovative MMO design... yaay.
makes me so upset that this design strategy got to be so popular. why don't they just make TOR a Star Wars-skinned rehash of something awesome like Planetside? I don't want to fight the Sarlac.. I wanna kill Jedis! eerImean I love Jedis >_> <_< +_+

 

[Warlockofaus]

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the post-level cap content will mostly consist of repeating the same dungeon once a week with the same large group on a schedule hoping for a rare drop.

 

[Nurb]

As much I as hope it turns out well, they're probably fucking it up... they were all set to roll out the closed beta testing last summer, then all of a sudden there's an update about a mysterious delay and the news about the game has slowed to a trickle.

I've been looking forward to hopefully help test the game in beta since I like the idea and want it to work out, and because its the only way to know if you want to by a damn MMO unless you want to wait 6-12 months so you don't waste your money on a blind purchase.

But this is EA, and I quit WAR before my free month was up, that shitpile, so I'm not making a mistake like a blind MMO buy again... I'm willing to give them money but I have to be able to try it first, otherwise fuck em.

 

[T-Bone24]

I like MMOs, I really like BioWare. It's a win-win.

I have thankfully never known the frustration of hitting the level cap, unfortunately I just get bored or run out of playtime in MMOs.

 

[RelexCryo]

Easy- let players have actual control over the game world. As in, they can destroy cities and build their own. then let them duke it in massive PvP for control of the galaxy.

SWG did this, and it worked pretty well, until the game was killed by a string of totally unnecessary changes, coupled with an utter failure to address serious issues. But they never really took it far enough.

Let players create their own cities, societies and political factions, and then kill each other for supremacy.

WoW was boring when I left it because their was no real benefit to PvP other than loot which would be obsolete in 6 months anyways, and doing a dungeon raid 300 times in a row is pretty much inherently boring.

 

[RelexCryo]

I like MMOs, I really like BioWare. It's a win-win.

I have thankfully never known the frustration of hitting the level cap, unfortunately I just get bored or run out of playtime in MMOs.

Level cap isn't frustrating, it's boring. There is a difference. Imagine sitting in a traffic jam with a full bladder, late for an appointment, with people honking all around you and your A/C is broken and it is HOT. That's frustrating.

Imagine sitting around in your comfortable house with nothing to do. That is boring.

Hitting the level cap is actually satisfying, not frustrating. But it eventually becomes boring. By contrast, being unable to *hit* the level cap because you need a team to level up in something remotely resembling adequate speed, but being unable to find a team- now that is frustrating.

 

[Danallighieri]

I'm interested to see what they'll do for it...perhaps something like Aion's Abyss will be used for this, can't really see raids like in wow working well in this kind of situation so it'll be interesting to hear their plans

 

[CloudKiller]

This game was already dead to me when they said they "balanced" Jedi. Jedi don't balance; Jedi are demigods!

In the time period this game is set Jedi are very numerous and the Jedi you'll be playing won't be masters or chosen ones, they'll be the ones you see in the background of the jedi temple and the ones that get gunned down by battle droids and troopers.

All the other classes will be representing the best of the best and have lots of anti-Jedi counter moves. The game will be balanced, there will be no alpha class.

 

[MaVeN1337]

How reassuring, A game company has a plan for MMO end game content, hooray Bioware.

Why are people salivating over something that's been done already, Just because its being done by Bioware? There so freaking overrated.

 

[GiantRedButton]

How reassuring, A game company has a plan for MMO end game content, hooray Bioware.

Why are people salivating over something that's been done already, Just because its being done by Bioware? There so freaking overrated.

Has been done already?
Even wow didnt have any endgame content on release. They patched ony a bad single raidencounter after a long while into the game. But on release there was no endgame whatsoever.

 

[Raithnor]

Who has ever done "Endgame" well? Seriously, this is the most common complaint I've heard from the MMO crowd and I've never heard a conherent answer about what makes a solid endgame.

Also, I don't buy the fact that the whole point of the MMO is to constantly raise the level cap to keep people running on the treadmill. You would think it would be better to keep wrting new content for a specific level maximum than to keep coming up with new way to make the character more badass, while not breaking the game system at the same time.

That being said I know how TOR could keep the content flowing, adding new worlds with new plaentary backstories and plots for the character classes and new flashpoints, but those are content updates and not really endgame.

As for KoTOR 3: If you really want to know what KoTOR 3 would have been like play the Jedi Knight Class. Back when the DEVs did the Jedi Class reveals they mentioned that the Jedi Knight was what they thought the "Default" KoTOR game should be.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

At the end-game you are catapulted into KotOR III?

That's what I hope. So very dearly.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

If it has 0 pvp then I'll try it for a month. If it has any kind of pvp then it will fail like all other mmos that have pvp (except guild wars, and that has suck ass pve).

lolwut?
That makes no sense at all, PvP isn't what makes MMOs boring, PvP isn't what every MMO is copying from WoW over and over. PvP is the only thing that will get me to *play* an MMO (and PvE will get me to *not play* an MMO.)

pvp doesn't make MMOs boring, it makes them impossible to balance and requires MUCH more frequent item/skill adjustments than pure pve

pvp balancing also sucks a lot of the "flavor" out of a game when you have to perfectly balance factions against each other, as an example see WoW where they gave alliance shaman and horde paladins

 

[Xanthious]

How reassuring, A game company has a plan for MMO end game content, hooray Bioware.

Why are people salivating over something that's been done already, Just because its being done by Bioware? There so freaking overrated.

Has been done already?
Even wow didnt have any endgame content on release. They patched ony a bad single raid encounter after a long while into the game. But on release there was no endgame whatsoever.

What you are saying would indeed make this newsworthy . . . if we were still living in 2004. However, we aren't. Furthermore, just because WoW didn't do something 5-6 years ago doesn't mean it hasn't been done already. MMOs these days as a rule have endgame content. In fact, most launch with endgame content.

However, nowhere in the article does it say that Old Republic will be launching with endgame content. It only says "they have a plan". It doesn't say this plan is to do anything differently than what's already out there. It only says "We have a plan". The only thing you can take away from this article is that at some point in time (maybe release maybe not) you won't get rolling credits once you hit the level cap.

Now really, who couldn't of told you that before reading the article? By it's very nature of being an MMO we could of assumed that there would be things to do after you hit the level cap. Im sorry but there isn't a scrap of news anywhere in that article. It is simply Bioware saying that they have some ideas rolling around and they will let us in on em later on.

 

[cpsusie]

I don't normally play MMOs but I love Bioware to death and it sounds to me like you could play this MMO just like a single player game if you want (or maybe bring some friends you know along on a mission or two -- no strangers necessary) -- so I might actually like it.