How The Old Republic Didn't Change MMOs

[Atmos Duality]

Yes. And, as I said, we tend to measure our "success" by how much power we have to change the boring/unpleasant stuff. A game should offer us tons of that power. This game does not.

No argument there.

Yes, they are different. They are also valid. Some players prefer that kind of "story," while others prefer in-character interaction. An MMO should be a toolkit that allows either to thrive. This one offers neither -- the mechanics don't support steady in-character experience, and the out-of-character experience is very limited.

Rather than "best of both worlds," this game is just the center sliver of that Venn diagram.

I question whether a game can offer "the best of both worlds" without becoming extremely niche'.

In a multiplayer environment either you cede influence to individual players (MUDs of old do this, and it inevitably ends in griefing), or you take the "Look but don't touch" approach like WoW does with its story.

Bioware is working against established gaming logic in trying to inject personal story into an MMO.
I'm unsure whether to applaud their attempt or to shake my head at the futility.

It stays like this pretty much throughout. The only places that make other players feel 'necessary' are because of difficulty -- you need more lightsabers or blasters on this target to make its health go down. Multiplayer consistently shoves you out of the story and into the meta-game.

This is a single-player game. And a good one, mind you. But I pay for single player games once, personally.

So, it really just is a watered down KOTOR 3 in disguise, but with grind.
Thanks for the info.

 

[Oro44]

The innovation here (or gimmick, really) is the voice acting and conversations. The MMO staples are all present, grind, fetch quest, etc. However, due to conversations I find myself actually caring a little about whats going on.

Where the game shines for me is taking part in conversations with my friends in flashpoints and competing with them to steer the encounter in a certain direction. Because of this, TOR is actually the most fun I've had with an MMO since classic WoW came out seven (almost eight) years ago.

Is it like WoW? Yeah. Is every MMO like WoW? In one way or another, always. WoW, like Everquest before it, is the baseline that any MMO will inevitably be compared to. As for me, I'm having a blast. The question is, will it last?

 

[Nurb]

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

 

[LightGiver]

I kind of like the change. What bored me the most about MMOs was the need to grind lvl by lvl. The social aspect is fun, this game just replaces mundain grinding with an interesting story and side quests. Not that many side quests are go out and kill X creatures, some are hey go talk to this guy and convince him to stop killing the locals, you can chose to take a bribe from him, let him go, or kill him

 

[Sam Kennedy]

To all those complaining about companions being the same. You do realize that their are companion customization items that completely change the look of your companion and their are quite a few of them too. Not to mention each companion has a full set of gear they wear.

Ive never seen to companions that look exactly alike (with gear) but sure if you keep your stock companion customization instead of buying a new one you are bound to run into more companions that look similair to yours.

That being said if what your complaining about is that other ppl have companions walking around with the same name as yours (which it seems that yoou are) then i dont really know what to say, its a freaking name, like i said with gear and companions customizations ive rarely seen 2 companions that look the same. The only times that happens are when you first get a new companion and they are in their stock gear and youve yet to put a companions customization on them yet and that period should be brief, its not too hard to go buy a companions customization or to go buy some new better gear to put on your companion. Also if the name part is really bugging you, just take the companion Name bars off in your interface options.....

 

[Sam Kennedy]

Also the reason that the cieling are high in mmo's is so that your view is not all squished and you can zoom in and out and get a good look at your surroundings...

I thought tha was fairly obvious.

 

[Sam Kennedy]

I agree with 2 posts up, the quests beyond your main class quests offer great storylines if you actually follow them. Sure not all of them offer deep storylines like your class quests , but i feel as if they give you more of a purpose and draw you more into the world just by having dialogue with your quest giver.

Also their are many quests and quest chains that actually do offer class quest quality storylines. I feel sorry for those who think that the only good storylines in the game are the ones for your class quest. Also i dont think the author of this article is very far in the game yet as he would probably know that their are fantastic quests beyond your class quests. Unless he has so little faith hes been skipping the dialogue for normal quests, which would be a total shame.

One of my friends felt that way (he was level 15) and he just started levelling pvp only, to me it feels like such a waste, you are playing a repetitive game over and over again to level up instead of playing a part of the game which the developers probably put 100x more effort into making. Not to mention pvp isnt going anywhere you can do it at 50 when you are done with your storyline and questing, whereas once yoou hit 50 how likely is it that your going to go back to all the planets just to play out their storylines.

 

[Dastardly]

I question whether a game can offer "the best of both worlds" without becoming extremely niche'.

In a multiplayer environment either you cede influence to individual players (MUDs of old do this, and it inevitably ends in griefing), or you take the "Look but don't touch" approach like WoW does with its story.

Bioware is working against established gaming logic in trying to inject personal story into an MMO. I'm unsure whether to applaud their attempt or to shake my head at the futility.

I think games like this should be more niche. Again, looking at SWG (the easy comparison) dancing was a small niche, but well-loved. Crafting was very robust, though it catered to a minority of the player base. With all the early ins-and-outs of Jedi, that was a whole 'nother niche. I prefer not to think of these as niche features, but rather as features that are distinctly flavored -- in practice, yes, that narrows their appeal, but to call them "niche" misplaces the intent, I think.

So, while individual aspects of the game were very distinctly flavored, the game allowed for many, many flavors to coexist. Combat-oriented players could do their thing. Non-combat players could, too. If you weren't into researching the conductivity of the copper you're using to create blaster rifle power handlers, you never had to even know what any of that was. If you didn't want to fight Krayt dragons, you didn't even have to know what planet they were on.

Modern MMOs want mass appeal, but they also only want to cater to one core group of players. That means blander, less distinct flavor throughout each aspect of the game, with many of those aspects being marginalized. You can't be a full-time non-combat player anymore, no matter how much you may want to. You have to be the Hero of the World, and heroes fight.

Basically, the one-flavor-fits-all way of doing things is the problem I have. It makes design easier, sure (though, I'll note, it hasn't lowered the price one bit). And that makes it easier to fit more story and voice acting in there, because there are far fewer directions in which players can go.

It's the difference between New York City and Smalltown, USA. In New York, everyone can find what they want to do, because the city is home to thousands of niches. There are plenty of people there who don't get along, but they don't really have to -- each has his/her own place to go. Contrast that with some Smalltown place. There's basically one ruling "culture" of the town, and if you're not part of it... Well, you know where the exit is. It creates the illusion of one vision, and everyone getting along, but really it's just tying everyone into the same bundle and trimming off any fringe that happens to stick out.

And as for the "personal story," to me the whole point is that the story isn't personal. Not to MY "person," at least. I don't feel I own my character in any sense of the word. I dress how I'm told, I use the voice I'm assigned, the ship that is issued to me, the pre-approved companions that are available, to follow a mildly-branching storyline. And the fact that this heavily-detailed storyline is there means a lot of time was spent on it... rather than on any features that might allow me a more personal story.

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

Case in point. When everyone's special, no one's special.

 

[Agayek]

Now that I think about it, why are the ceilings so high?

The real reason? Camera zoom issues. The developers want to make sure you have room to move the camera around and view your character from any angle without suddenly being able to see through walls or ceilings or whatever.

It's kinda silly, as the smaller ceilings can/do foster a sense of claustrophobia which can really make raid encounters interesting, but I guess it's not to be.

 

[Supernova2000]

One problem with multi-player games is narrative tends to be ignored or easily shattered due to the social aspect. Yahtzee pointed this out in his "Fear 3" review where the game tries telling a story to the *players*, but they would rather joke or develop strategies for the next level.

In WoW, before Cataclysm, I was given a quest to eliminate X panthers and Y boars in the Night Elves newbie area to thin their herd. Yet my immersion to the game was instantly shattered when seeing other night elves killing off the creatures all around me, and some NPC telling me that they still have a breeding issue.

Exactly, such a thing shoots my immersion right between the eyes! I've been watching a Let's Play TOR series on Youtube and in one episode, he was asked to disable some toxic mines in a village crop field but no sooner had he finished than another player went past him, doing the exact same thing! I just cannot take it seriously when said crop field is in an eternal state of having toxic mines yet never in danger of being poisoned. It's like Yahtzee said in his Age of Conan review: being the Chosen One is undermined by the knowledge that there are thousands of other Chosen Ones running around, which is exactly why I simply could never give a space-flying shit about the "story" in Star Trek Online; being congratulated for thwarting the Borg invasion of the Vega colony is meaningless when you consider that it is still being thwarted even now.

 

[Lex Darko]

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

Case in point. When everyone's special, no one's special.

This is exactly what happened with Age of Conan and it's story missions. People may forget but yes, Age of Conan (AoC) has a full voiced single player campaign complete with cut-scenes.

The main story missions would try their best to make you feel like your character was special but moment the mission was over you would see 50 other people with the exact same reward from the last story mission. That sight completely negates any emotional impact from the main story.

Seeing 50 Vette's in three different colors doesn't help SW:TOR avoid that problem it actually makes it worse because it is a walking, and talking reminder that everyone has a main story and your character isn't special in the slightest.

My largest disappointment with the game by far however lies with the combat. It such a boring combat system. The combat mechanics are polished, work, and are over a decade old. There's nothing impressive about combat and after playing Vindictus TOR's combat system is a lullaby.

 

[Supernova2000]

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

Hence why I sincerely hope that Guild Wars 2, with it's dynamic events system, succeeds in eliminating the aforementioned Quest Camping, along with other bug bears like Kill Stealing and Episode Repeats; it really pisses me off how MMO websites mention the ability to repeat your favourite quests as though it's a good thing! Yes, on singleplayer games, I sometimes like to reload my favourite missions like anybody else but the key difference here is that I'm loading an earlier save game, turning back the game clock to last Friday! An MMO is an ongoing experience so it makes bugger-all sense to have the game carry on chronologically while past quests repeat themselves, it's such a confusing mess! In any sci-fi film/series episode you care to name, that would be considered a major cosmic fuck up!

MMO's are basically virtual lives (or at least they should be) - more so than singleplayer games, given their ongoing nature - and it is essential for immersion that events are truly ongoing; I really enjoyed going bowling with friends on my birthday but I know full damn well that I can't physically repeat it, only cherish the memory!

But there is a simpler way that MMO's could remedy this problem: When the player does a quest for the first time, then have it go as normal but if they choose to go through it again, then present it strictly as a flashback/daydream instance, that way I can believe that my character is just thinking about how they would've done things differently.

 

[Frostbite3789]

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

That's an extremely cynical way to approach it and any game could be thought of that way, even single player games. You just can't see the other people doing it, but there are millions of other Cole McGrath's out there busting out lightning and jacking villains.

Or millions of other people taking down Alduin. You can be cynical about any game, it's easy. It's just choosing how you want to look at it.

Yeah, this is pretty much KOTOR 3, but it's KOTOR 3 I can experience with friends, adventuring together.

And that's pretty damn cool.

 

[Nurb]

For me the experience is "strange" because in KOTOR, you are the "chosen one" who decides the fate of the galaxy, but with it in an MMO setting, you see thousands of other "chosen ones" comically lining up for the "The big mean world boss that everyone is afraid to go after" to respawn so they can have their turn to kill them and move on to the next.

It's like a theme park and everyone is walking around with their own companions for winning the games and getting in line for the next ride behind others with the same prizes and souvenirs

That's an extremely cynical way to approach it and any game could be thought of that way, even single player games. You just can't see the other people doing it, but there are millions of other Cole McGrath's out there busting out lightning and jacking villains.

Or millions of other people taking down Alduin. You can be cynical about any game, it's easy. It's just choosing how you want to look at it.

Yeah, this is pretty much KOTOR 3, but it's KOTOR 3 I can experience with friends, adventuring together.

And that's pretty damn cool.

Except there's a difference between a persistant world MMO game and a single player game on your PC. I didn't come back from killing Alduin to see a line of other Dovahkiin players with their ticket to kill him once he resets, and I don't run by the fort I just took over for a faction respawn the enemies for someone else.

You're going to have to accept that people who enjoyed the KOTOR experience might find this game a bit "strange" feeling in some areas

 

[mutazoia]

Ok... going to address some of the comments in random order...Keep in mind I was in the beta for quite a while and saw a lot of changes before the final release...

The ceilings are so high because of the Datacrons. They are (almost) always up high and out of sight when using a standard following camera angle. Also, as previously stated, having high ceilings makes camera controls a bit easier, such as changing views to look down on a combat situation, making it easier to choose your next target.

SW:TOR was actually designed to let people play with out having to get into a group if they didn't want to. You can quite happily run around the Galaxy questing with out ever teaming up with a single other player. Sure, you'll miss out on the XP and some good gear by bypassing the heroic areas, but if you are one of those people who don't like group up with people unless its absolutely necessary, you don't have to. In a few cases I was able to solo the heroic areas with just me and my tanking companion.

The class story lines serve to move you from planet to planet, unlike in other MMO's such as WoW where you just mainly wander around picking up random quests willy nilly. In WoW, you really have no set goal beyond "get to lvl 85 as fast as possible with the best gear". The class stories are a goad to get you more invested in your character and the events that happen as you play.

Sure there may be 100 Jedi prodigies wandering the same area as you, but unless you all change a few advanced settings, you'll never be in the same heroic phase with them, so it's never really a problem. The side quests are more detailed that in other MMO's, and are (usually) be more involved than "go fetch X number of beaks just because I said so", and even the go kill X number of Y mob quests actually have some sense to them when they do pop up.

Honestly, who stops to have a discussion about the dialogue choices? Everybody picks their own choice, and the game randomly selects one person's choice to display as the outcome. If you chose the good option and everybody else chooses the evil option, you still get the light side points, they still get the dark side points, you just have to watch a different response than you picked. You can click through the cut scenes as fast as you want, or through the NPC dialogue, but you still get to sit and wait when the dialogue tree pops up...so you don't have people missing out on conversations/information if they don't want to, so the guy who's run the quest 10 times can't rush the guy doing it for the first time. If you don't care to read..then space bar away...its your choice. And the light/dark side points do have an effect.

Not just on your looks, but in terms of gear that you can use. Sure it won't effect the outcome of your class quest but you can play the same class 5 times or 50 times and not have the same rout to the end ever time.

As stated in another post, you will rarely see two companions looking exactly the same. Except the droids, but then who really gets bent out of shape when two mass produced droid models look identical? For the other companions you can change everything from what they wear to the color of their skin and hair (if they have it). Sure, being able to re-name them would be nice but there's only so much code you can work into an MMO before it gets clunky.

There's very little to no quest camping with TOR. There are a few out-door, non instanced quest areas but you don't have camp them. Example: On Taris I followed behind 5 different groups all on the same quest to recover stolen missile war heads. (I was solo). The groups took turns clearing out the mobs (with me lending healing here and there)and walking up to the quest objectives...the objectives don't de-spawn when clicked so we could all group around and click away then move to the next objective. Sure you have to wait for resource nodes to respawn (just like wow)...or world bosses (Special raid level mobs) but they usually respawn pretty fast and most groups I saw would gladly add you to their group if you asked before the fight began. Most of the quest areas are instanced just like in Wow.

The only time I had to grind for XP in TOR was for that last bit of XP to go from LvL 9 to LvL 10. For some reason, even after completing every quest and side quest on the starting planets, I always came up a few hundred XP short. After that, the number of quests available on subsequent planets far exceeded what was necessary to reach the minimum level requirement for the next planet. Even with out the extended quest lines.

Sure, TOR isn't the perfect MMO. The crafting bit could be nicer. Only being allowed one crafting and two gathering skills kind of blows when you need materials from 3 different gathering skills, but that supports the trade houses I suppose. Spending all your hard earned commendations (think badges from WoW) on an artifact case only to get an artifact that can only be used by some one on the opposite faction is very lame (but you can sell it at the cross faction trading kiosk on Nar Shadda). The fact that you need a really good video card to run the game on anything but the lowest settings kind of blows as well...especially when your trying to make those little micro jumps from crate to crate to get that stupid datacron, and your frame rate is so low that you fall off before you even see its time to jump...(I spent an hour with another player trying to get him to one of the datacrons on Coruscant...his frame rate was just too low to make those micro jumps)

In short, SW:TOR is definitely not WoW, and expecting it to be is kind of stupid. BW attempted to make an MMO that wasn't a carbon copy of every other MMO that has been on the market, and they've succeeded. Sure, you can't make an MMO with out some common factors but its the differences that make SW:TOR more that "WoW in Space". Whether or not you like it is up to you.

 

[sumanoskae]

I'd pretty much agree, but for slightly different reasons. So far, I like the game, but there's nothing exceptional about it that couldn't have been better if it was just Knights of the Old Republic III. I think I have two major gripes so far, one is the combat.

I don't think it's bad by MMO standards, but that's just it, MMO standards. You and your enemy start kicking eachother in the shins until one of you falls over, the only deciding factor is who bought the bigger boots. Not only that, but it's really awkward to control a quick slot bar and keep yourself moving and attacking all at the same time, because some world renown intellect decided that what MMO combat was missing was that you didn't have to tell your stupid character to keep fighting.

Real time combat is great if it functions like actual combat, but you only have control over one aspect of combat that requires no skill or effort, it's more like a quick time event that repeats endlessly. All it's good for is making you constantly focus on your quick slots instead of the action, which is a shame, because the animations are actually pretty nice by MMO standards

I know Bioware can make melee combat in an RPG fun, they did it with Jade Empire. Remember how cool it was when you first got to experiment with a new style?, wouldn't it have been great to do that with force powers?.

The other thing is the questing structure, not only do half the quests feel like they're just there to level you up, SIDE quests become mandatory because the game expects you to be a certain level before allowing you to continue the main story. Because since everyone is playing together there can be no difficulty option.

And there is no reason for all this bullshit, I feel like I'm working my way through an MMO to get to KOTOR III. the game looks and plays like it's from a few years ago, and nothing that I do will change the world in a meaningful way because the status quo must remain. And for what?, so I can risk my choices being stolen by other players?. So I can hope my party members will do their jobs instead of just telling them what to do?. So some other player can stand around during the dialogue?.

Everything this game could have been was sacrificed on the altar of multiplayer, MMO's being the resource hogs that they are, despite the fact that they necessitate inferiority to single player games in almost every way. The only perk is that there's more meaningless bullshit to pad things out for more players.

The story of TOR, wrapped in a more modernized and polished game, with a different leveling system and redone combat, that's a game I would love... You know, like Knights of the Old Republic III.

P.S: Space combat's kinda fun, though.

 

[Gather]

In one "flashpoint encounter" designed for groups, the choice of whether or not to kill a man determines which of two directions the quest will take.

That is the one and only Flashpoint encounter that has the option like that (The first one). A story being told, characters interacting with things and player choice deciding the flow.

All the others follow this formula:
- Speak to the Bastila-Clone; gasp when required and get the quest
- Enter the instance
- Tank and Spank till a terrible good/evil choice (I'll expand on terrible later)
- After terrible good/evil choice tank and spank some more
- Instance ends

When I say terrible; I mean terrible. It so badly feels like it was put in as a last minute idea. For some Flashpoints it's this:
You are shutting down the shield. You have the option to kill some dudes by overloading the console. Will you kill some dudes?
Some Engineers are trapped in an airlock; they supported a group of people who did evil things. Do you lock them up in the airlock so they can't escape or kill them?
Missiles are firing and you can't stop it. Target missiles at the enemy fleet or at an uninhabited moon?
These guys have finished setting up an emergency beacon but went a little nuts before they could turn it on. Do you want to turn the beacon on or destroy it?

 

[Alan Sigus]

For me, SW:TOR would be much more playable if it was only for me. Other people running around in "my" RPG are just a distraction and immersion breakers. I'd like to see other people only in cities or when I have invited them into "my" game.
To be honest, this is what I thought TOR will be when I read all the previews and interviews. Instead out came just another MMO with boring quests, boring combat but good storyline (for some characters more, for some less).

That's why I liked Hellgate so much- I could really believe that my character was "the one", as I saw others only in hubs

Would be great if there was an option to turn off seeing other people in my game... *sigh*

 

[beniki]

Er... yeah. You could tell that from the start. The two faction divide, the pretty clear class analogues on both sides, the instanced dungeon planets etc.

It's not a straight up WoW clone by any means, but it's not a great leap forward for MMOs. We'll have to wait for Guild Wars 2 for that!

Oh, and just so people can have a look; Star Trek Online has a fully customisable companion group in the ships crew. All Bioware needs to do is just apply stock dialogue to the players creations and suddenly, everyone has their own unique companion. Maybe in the next expansion