Your first experience of a massive city is when you're a low level player and you come across one of the capital cities and oh look they're dead. It just feels so barren and lifeless compared to say cities in WoW which not only have so much atmosphere, but have lots of players in. Now Bioware have never been known for their level design, SWTOR doesn't make up for the atmosphere with populating with NPCs that seem busy like GW2 or sound design like WoWs either. So this problem of feeling like no one is around is impacted even more by having no players too. 

Then I'll take another example and that is the two oposing cities on Tatooine and how they were the first to blow me away. They were fully 3D so you could jump on all the roof tops and go all around the city like one in SWG. Even better is how the world is designed so perfectly for world PVP, it's pretty much one of the only world PVP planets in the game and was the only planet I actually encountered PVP on. However again no one is there so the cities feel lifeless and the is no world PVP left.

So what are people doing? They're on the Fleet Stations which I heard were put into beta because none of the cities were acting as main hubs. Firstly I want to say to that bullshit argument is Feet Stations were in beta when they started opening it up to the masses. They weren't in beta when there were very little people actually in it. Also hubs don't tend to form in beta because people are out exploring the world, the Fleets didn't even act as hubs until a majority of people hit end level after release. So I don't believe this argument is true as well as people don't tend to use the AH in beta either, so they would have had even less reason to want to be in a hub.

Who says we need a hub anyways? Why can't we have the population spread out throughout the game worlds and put all the major features in each city? I believe the Fleet Station only came about because moving from planet to planet was so cumbersome that the Fleet was put in as an easy fix for the poor planet to planet travel mechanism in the game.

I think the best sollution would be to remove Fleet Stations, connect city chats up so you can be in any city and still be able to talk to everyone in each city so it wouldn't matter which one you went to. You then put all the major features in every city, like the AH and you put the Raid and group instances into the world so you have to go to each world to see that content. You remvoe the stupid travel system that is in the game so it only takes one process to go to a new planet like in SWG where you just go to a SP and click on the droid by the ship to go whereever you want. 

This would put people in the world, make new players feel like the worlds are more populated and people would be more willing to do stuff like world PVP on planets like Tatooine. You could put PVP objectives on planets like Tatooine too and you could have great battles on there like when it was populated when the game came out.

The Fleet Stations are the worst more generic bit of level design, I hate them and they do nothing for the game but kill it. What they've done is turned SWTOR from an MMO to a hub based game like GW, PSO or Diablo. Until theyv'e gone, I cannot feel like this game is a proper MMO and I cannot have fun because all they do is make you sit in a boring hub.

It's basically like putting everything in the UI before you login to the game and saying "you don't have to bother logging into the world world" and you just select what you want to do from a menu. Could you imagine amazing looking cities like Anchorhead being populated by people, it would be so much better than the drab stations.

People always focus on the technical aspects.    What makes an MMO grow and succeed is the social environment.    SWTOR, by its design, failed to encourage/develop the social aspect.   So they failed.

Had they made the game really focus on supporting the social aspects of the game, they'd have had far fewer problems with retention than the do now.     And I know it's tricky if you're coming into it blind.    But I'd thought they'd at least read some of the papers on what makes an MMO tick and why people stay or leave.   But, apparently, they didn't, so they fell into a trap of their own hubris and designed an MMO that fostered solo-play over social gaming and as people get bored with the solo-play...   They leave.

While I don't necessarily approve of their design decision, are you really that blind as to place the entire "killing" of ToR on a single facet (The Fleet Stations).

Are you for real or is this some fail attempt at a troll?  Am I not understanding the brunt of this joke?

Seriously, there are a TON of other reasons.  The straw that broke the camels back for most of MY guildies was the 1.2 PvP update.  That was that for them.  Frankly, the stations were there for all of the beta's I participated in.  And people still played.  

I think you, like the rest of the world, are attempting to dumb a problem down into a single object.  The world is not black and white, more like complex shades of gray.  For example, if they removed fleet stations, would that suddenly fix all of Biowares woes?  Hell no.  Thus, you're post is HIGHLY incorrect even though it is a valid point.

Originally posted by Ikeda

While I don't necessarily approve of their design decision, are you really that blind as to place the entire "killing" of ToR on a single facet (The Fleet Stations).

Are you for real or is this some fail attempt at a troll?  Am I not understanding the brunt of this joke?

Seriously, there are a TON of other reasons.  The straw that broke the camels back for most of MY guildies was the 1.2 PvP update.  That was that for them.  Frankly, the stations were there for all of the beta's I participated in.  And people still played.  

I think you, like the rest of the world, are attempting to dumb a problem down into a single object.  The world is not black and white, more like complex shades of gray.  For example, if they removed fleet stations, would that suddenly fix all of Biowares woes?  Hell no.  Thus, you're post is HIGHLY incorrect even though it is a valid point.

No need for insults, I think he's exactly right. I think your right too. Your both right LOL.

The fleet is at the core of the social problem without a doubt. There are many other issues bogging down lack of socialness (made up word I know)  so we can't lay it all solely on the fleet.

There are many many other bad issues under every category you can think of but the fleet thing ranks among the top.

They should take out the fleet, those things suck. All of those missions would be better if the hubs were the capital cities.

All the stations are terrible and they should ALL be removed.   To use a annoying slog from their hype, I never saw luke or han docking at the station with the falcon so that they could board a shuttle to land on the planet with.   Not to mention the flashpoint killing choice to put most of them on the fleet station in a seprate zone from where people of that level would be.

The travelling system is what hurt this game.  Too much zoning back and forth to get anything done.  It could've been avoided if they lowered the cooldown on Emergency Fleet passes to 1 hour, or just give us a Quick Travel ability to our ships.  Summons to Flashpoints would have worked too, instead of a LFG tool.

Too much inconvenient travel between ships, zones, planets, airlocks, etc.   It's good for immersion the first time, but an annoyance after that.

Nah, though fleet sucks it did not kill ToR alone. Other people have posted reasons. The fleet is boring and lifeless in comparison to even games that had only one capital city in them like DAoC. Back in classic DAoC, the capital city of each realm was teeming with people advertizing tradeskills, getting large groups for RvR and PvE at all levels, or just chatting. The thing is that everyone realized that it was the place to hang out if you wanted to find people, and DAoC was a very social game in those days. It was also difficult to travel around the realms back in those days.

ToR is not a social game. That is the real problem with it and it is far bigger and harder to solve than just getting rid of fleet.

I also disagree with you about Bioware not being good at level design. They used to be absolutely awesome at it, well back in the BG days. Unfortunately, once they made the transition to 3D it seems like they slipped. Shame...

One of my biggest negatives too. Agree with your post, OP.

I came to experience them as shopping malls. As I tend to avoid those like the plague in real life it is butt wrenching to be forced to visit them so often in my virtual escape from reality.

I'm not in full agreement with the OP about stations kiling TOR..  However,  I am in agreement there is no true reason or use to have them there.. Why have capital cities if you aren't going to use them to the fullest..  You can tell that stations were a last minute thought, and it comes off feeling that way too..  Not a game breaker, but they are on the list of reason why I cancelled..

Nope poor Game engine, lack of endgame activities, no dungeon Finder, and piss poor class balance (hello who ever had the most Sorcerers usually won) static world, boring kill 10 womprats, and incomptent devs killed SWTOR.

Blame the people that beta tested the game for the fleets, if they had not bitched about it being too hard to find NPCs in the cities, fleets would not exist.

I've heard that beta testers repeatedly begged them to ditch the stations. My guess is they realized what the framerates would be like if they made the capitals the hubs (due to unoptimized HERO engine) and had to hit the eject button. The stations are obviously contrived to preserve framerate, and even in those stupid spaces if you get over 120 people you will get some ditching on your framerate.

They put the community pop center in a transitional space. Nobody wants to hang out in a bus station.

It's a bit of irony though, as many are there just waiting to board a shuttle for D3, TSW, GW2.

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Nope poor Game engine, lack of endgame activities, no dungeon Finder, and piss poor class balance (hello who ever had the most Sorcerers usually won) static world, boring kill 10 womprats, and incomptent devs killed SWTOR.

Pretty much this but I would like to add that 90% of the blame lies on the people at the top making the design decisions. The developers are typically the programmers that just do what they are told. Lets put some names to the ones responsible for the overall vision. The ones that come to mind are James Ohlen, Mr Dickenson and Gabe Amatangelo the lead PvP designer. These 3 guys should be fired, immediately for their gigantic failure to deliver. For an example take a look at this video and tell me it's not incompetence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S-yW7hljxc (7:20 he cant say much more about that..)

Also it's pretty old to listen to them constantly saying 'this is phase 1..more to come but cant talk about it'....the old carrot on a stick must have really been drilled into them because i hear that from all the designers, 'coming soon..'..'have big plans for the future '..ect. Ya ok they had 5 years and couldnt implement phase 1 of pvp ranked?

What can be done? Well first fire the current designers because those are the ones that got them in this situation in the first point. Yes I know the economy is tough but they can take thier family to Disneyland on their freking welfare check for all I care. Second I would get input or just hire someone that has a vision to make the game feel like Star Wars. It amazes me that 12 years ago back in EQ you could have 100+ people in a zone, there were no instances but today a game like TOR feels if there is more that 50 people in a gigantic huge zone they need to instance it. Instancing ruins a lot of the social aspects of a game.

Originally posted by DarkPony

One of my biggest negatives too. Agree with your post, OP.

I came to experience them as shopping malls. As I tend to avoid those like the plague in real life it is butt wrenching to be forced to visit them so often in my virtual escape from reality.

 

Welcome back. :)

And yeah I found too those Fleets were boring and bad design.

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by DarkPony

One of my biggest negatives too. Agree with your post, OP.

I came to experience them as shopping malls. As I tend to avoid those like the plague in real life it is butt wrenching to be forced to visit them so often in my virtual escape from reality.

 

Welcome back. :)

 

And yeah I found too those Fleets were boring and bad design.

I like how the pub fleet and the imp fleet are the same...

may things killed swtor ..

1 is calling it an mmorpg..plays alot more like an single player game..with co-op play like a xbox game you play wit yur mates

2 is EA+BW+LArts = bad things..with EA / LArts its all about $$$$ and advertising ..with BW its about quality and game play and EA / LArt is runing the show its clear to see

3 too many other things to list

a bit off topic but with TSW coming out i rly hope that fails too..i dont want to see this type of genra like "cut scenes every 2 / 3 sec telling the story to you / choose this / this or this path ..its not what mmorpgs are about..imo gtfo here with the cut scenes and read / use imagination..but the generation has become soo lazy at everthing and the crowd base getting younger the future is looking pretty bleek

All you have to do is have your ship appear sitting like the Falcon and to every person you see your own personal ship and no one elses. Then you click to go into your ship, pick a planet and you travel there. Take the class specific areas away, take the fleets away and take the orbital stations away.

You'll then have the operation and flashpoint content dotted around each of the worlds so you actually have to travel to them which encourages world PVP, exploration and makes the worlds populated. Anything you needed from the Fleets will all be in the Capital Cities and most of the other stuff like the GTN would be in every city and you ahve all the city chats connected. 

Then connect the two cities on Tatooine to the planet as the land does exist between them, they just make you get on a forced Taxi which is annoying. Put PVP objectives on the planet and allow each other to attack the cities.

Instead of adding new planets open up all the smaller linear planets by added new zones and allowing you to control your own vehicle instead of the Taxis and open up PVP from the second planets with the Capital cities.

I would then play SWTOR just as long as they took the combat back to pre 1.2.

Originally posted by DarkPony

One of my biggest negatives too. Agree with your post, OP.

I came to experience them as shopping malls. As I tend to avoid those like the plague in real life it is butt wrenching to be forced to visit them so often in my virtual escape from reality.

 

indeed