Bioware Has a Plan for The Old Republic End-Game

[Kandon Arc]

Bioware has a plan for endgame content? In other news Halo Reach will feature aliens and Uncharted 3 will have guns.

 

[warmonkey]

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.

Whether it's raising the level cap or just continually releasing better and better gear, the end result is the same. Raising the level cap is just a real easy way to incentivize an expansion purchase -- ie, if you don't buy the expansion you really can't even play with your friends past a certain point.
Both work out the same way in the end, though. PvE treadmill.. yay.

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

PvP isn't impossible to balance.. but when a game is a PvE-centric game, yeah you're pretty much right. PvE means classes have specific roles, very hard and delineated, and that means PvP is just wonky. Healers are too strong, or tanks are too tanky, or DPS is just mowing everyone down. it's because the classes are designed and *must be* designed to deal with the PvE content, which invariably has bosses with a crapton of HP and damage output. Otherwise, you could tank with non-tanks, or the DPS classes wouldn't be as necessary, or the healers don't need to heal. That's just the nature of the design.

It's possible to have a balance between factions without mirroring all the classes. Honestly, from the time I played WAR (I stopped before max level because the game got progressively worse past level 20), the factions were at least as balanced as WoW's factions, except there were no identical classes. WoW's just never been very keen on class balance. They do a lot of class *balancing*, yes, but the classes have just progressively gotten more and more absurd and off-kilter since.. well, since the time they introduced the "+spell damage" stat, honestly. WoW's class balance is riding on the back of a tiger.


Yes I am overly hard on WoW. Its success has made everyone else think it's the *only way* to make an MMO, and that's ruined a few contenders.. namely, imo, WAR, which would've been awesome had it been more like DaoC but instead tried to turn towards WoW and.. yeah, it's not good. WoW's also created a LOT of gamers whose only experiences in multiplayer online gaming are WoW, facebook games, and some console FPS game... there's just so much more that's possible, so much more that's been done *in the past*, but the industry is simply afraid to stray too far from the "mainstream". Nobody wants to make an MMO that ISN'T going to be a WoW-killer, and everyone believes the only way to make a WoW-killer MMO is to make a WoW-like MMO "but better!", which just isn't going to fly. Nobody invested in WoW is going to jump ship to a nearly identical game, because they're already in a nearly identical game with a lot of time and money invested into it!

 

[Elementlmage]

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.

It depends on what time period this game takes place in. Is it post Jedi Civil War or pre? After the Jedi Civil War, there are only a few hundred Jedi left, and the order never really recovers. Looking at the tech in the teaser trailer as well as the armor the soldiers are wearing, the game seems to take place just before the Galactic Civil War, which means there are even FEWER Jedi!

I quite liked the Old SWG method of balancing Jedi. You bust your ass for a year to grind a character up to max level and do a MASSIVE quest line just to unlock the Jedi class. Then you work for another few months to get a max level Jedi. You put in WORK to become a demigod; they don't just hand it out like candy. And you know what, it balances itself. There were only a handful of Jedi in the player base. However, the few Jedi there were got to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

 

[hyperdrachen]

This game will either live up to its hype, cuing armageddon, or implode on itself, for more of the same. We're all doomed either way, but maybe we can get to level 15 first.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

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.

The problem is, TOR isn't going to be competing with WoW and other MMO's from 2004. It is going to be competing with WoW and other MMO's from today. That is the "WoW killer" paradox that modern MMO developers face due to the persistent nature of MMO's; all new games in the genre start with a lot of bugs and faults, yet modern MMO's cannot afford to have many due to already existing MMO's offering a much more polished experience.

So having endgame content by today's standards is nothing special. On the contrary, TOR would be at a severe disadvantage without it.

 

[paragon1]

Wow. They sure have made a lot of promises for this game. I really hope they can deliver, or Bioware's going to look like a bunch of assholes.

My thoughts exactly.

If they wanted to grab for that WoW cash, why'd they have to step on KotOR to do it? All I'm seeing are a lot of people blowing smoke about how their game is an MMO that won't have everything that sucks about MMOs, even though those parts are what make them MMOs.

Well they're using KotOR because it has name recognition. And I can't agree with you that the aspects they're saying The Old Republic won't have is necessary for an MMO (unless your definition of MMO is "exactly what WoW is"). I like everything they've said about they're game, I'm just skeptical about anyone being able to pull it off (though like many have said, if anyone can do it, it's Bioware).
Oh and KotOR got stepped on after they handed the franchise to Obsidian, who immediately dropped it and did a tap dance routine.
Also, why do people keep saying "all we've seen is two cinematic trailers and some screenshots" when Bioware has gameplay footage on their website?

 

[USSR]

How do you end a game that never really ends?

You got out with a bang.
Like The Matrix Online.

Doesn't really pertain to this topic, but I knew the answer to that question

 

[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.

It depends on what time period this game takes place in. Is it post Jedi Civil War or pre? After the Jedi Civil War, there are only a few hundred Jedi left, and the order never really recovers. Looking at the tech in the teaser trailer as well as the armor the soldiers are wearing, the game seems to take place just before the Galactic Civil War, which means there are even FEWER Jedi!

I quite liked the Old SWG method of balancing Jedi. You bust your ass for a year to grind a character up to max level and do a MASSIVE quest line just to unlock the Jedi class. Then you work for another few months to get a max level Jedi. You put in WORK to become a demigod; they don't just hand it out like candy. And you know what, it balances itself. There were only a handful of Jedi in the player base. However, the few Jedi there were got to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

The game is set hundreds of years after the Jedi civil war and the order has recovered. And SWG was terrible, by making Jedi an Alpha class they ruined all the other classes. Once people found out what had to be done to become a Jedi everyone did it. I can see that you clearly just want to own people as a Jedi, fair enough, you'll be able to do that in SW:TOR, just be prepared to be owned by a Bounty Hunter, Imperial Agent, Trooper and Smuggler just as often as you own them.

 

[Elementlmage]

The game is set hundreds of years after the Jedi civil war and the order has recovered. And SWG was terrible, by making Jedi an Alpha class they ruined all the other classes. Once people found out what had to be done to become a Jedi everyone did it. I can see that you clearly just want to own people as a Jedi, fair enough, you'll be able to do that in SW:TOR, just be prepared to be owned by a Bounty Hunter, Imperial Agent, Trooper and Smuggler just as often as you own them.

Actually, it is set almost 1000 years after the Jedi Civil War, because it takes place during the Galactic Civil War i.e. Post-Anakin-carving-up-younglings-like-a-Thanksgiving-turkey. Meaning, there are only a handful of Jedi left. Please, for the love of GOD learn your canon!

Also, earning Jedi was EXTREMELY difficult in old SWG(re Pre-NGE). I wasn't kidding when I said it would take over a year just to earn the class and get it to a respectable level. Even at the games peak, there were still only a handful of Jedi; so no, there were not Jedi running around everywhere. You are thinking of NGE SWG.

 

[Danpascooch]

I am guessing and hoping that when players hit the level cap new areas of the story will open up and we can continue questing and advancing the story of The Old Republic. I hope there is a plot point in TOR that allows us to search for what Revan was searching for.

Wait, so they would just keep developing content as people play, so that someone playing at a reasonable rate always has new content? (By which I mean like, once a month, something significant comes out, not like, streaming content of course, lol)

That would take so much work to do it would be unbelievable, but if they kept a dedicated development team on it all the time it could work, that would blow WoW out of the water.

Isn't this idea practically what WoW is doing just calling it different?

Yes and no. WoW is doing the same thing (with updates like Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel) but they are very very far apart (like 6 months on average, sometimes significantly longer) so although it seems the same, doing the same thing once a month by having a larger team devoted to new content patches would have an astronomically different effect.

 

[proghead]

I know. You turn into a mentor and teach new padawans (or however that word is spelled).