The game needs rich sandbox elements.Anything that has no sandbox elements does not worth the name of mmorpg.

Space combat is the worst ive seen even freelancer had better space combat even x-wing vs tie fighter

Originally posted by ignore_me

Originally posted by bobfish

Only needs to be one point on the list...

 

1. Every single sandbox element from SWG!

^^ haha awesome!

There you go....  this list was really blah to me, but everyone has different tastes.

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Threatlevel0

Have to say I was really letdown by your list...

 I would of went with the focus on open world planets, open world PvP like Bounty Hunting (no instanced pvp such as battlegrounds, arena,etc) the crafting, the professions skill system, one character with the ability to untrain and train skills, no levels, player cities, reasons for players to go to buildings such as cantinas/taverns.   

 But I guess everyone has their own taste.  I guess I would summarize mine under all the immersive, social aspects of SWG, rather than multi-person mounts...

I'm pretty sure they were trying to be realistic; offer suggestions that might be somewhat do-able.  I could actually imagine multiplayer vehicles, for example.  provide tools for player events, etc.

Your suggestions add up to "make TOR into SWG".  Even big maps like Hoth and Tatt would never accommodate player made cities, for example.  You'd have to rewrite the whole game.

 

I can see player cities being more do-able than player generated content, as the worlds are designed around the stories that Bioware created, and does not have game altering mechanics. In SWG you had the mission terminals, and the missions were generic. In CoH you have generic missions and it varies behind the same door. In STO it also has generic missions via the Anomilies in places like the Delta Volanis cluster, which loads up a random mission. You do not have this sort of thing in SWTOR

Player cities in SWTOR could be done similar to what LOTRO has, instead of getting the "Exhaustion Zone" warning, they could make an instance assecsible to enter and you go in pre-made player cities, and then buy houses. Better still obviosuly, you have an area where it is like SWG, but the LOTRO approach probably is more feasible

Hoth certainly would not have houses / player cities, but Tatooine could, and even in SWG not all planets could have player housing / cities - eg Dathomir, Endor, Kash, Musty

Sadly I do not see any of these things happening in SWTOR now, as even when the game just got off the ground and was doing well, Bioware were reluctant to consider these ideas, and now with all the layoffs, probably will never happen.

Add these other <3> Mike B

6 - Player housing / guild homes

7 - SWG Crafting system

8 - Personal player stores

I got to say that is the worst list I even saw anybody come up with of stuff they wanted from SWG., with the exception of space combat.

My list

(1) Player housing the ability to place a house and or city anywhere you wanted

(2) Crafting is a joke in swtor, what we need is crafting from swg pre nge when crafting actually meant something and depended on you know how to make a quality product or not.

(3)  space yes I agree space on rails is boring,  and lets let us decide what type of ship to fly.  The bh ship who came up with that idea you need to add the kse in there. I guess they had to have room for your crew.

(4)  pvp is a joke, huttball even more so,  I would like to see pvp areas like we had in swg.

(5) Armor, omg the armor in swg is plain ugly.  Every body looks like everybody else.   I love the fact back in swg we could wear clothing and put tapes and armor plates in.  Then we got unlucky and they went to ris armor so every bh wanted to look like the others. I knew some bh's that wore clone armor and died quickly to my master light saber skills. However the armor in swtor looks non star wars like and it is just ugly.  I still remember nighthawk who showed up in his brand new suit of ris armor to take me out, and yes he did after  45 minutes of pvp. I asked him was it worth it, he said no he just paid 1.2 million credits to buy that suit of armor and I had taken it down to 0 durring the fight, he forgot to put in his anti decay kits on it, and my bounty was only a meer 50k.  Risk vs reward yes add that too.

First, to the OP / Article Author - I appreciate the effort. It seems impossible to have a reasonable discussion on this subject without unrealistic nostalgia.  I loved SWG as much as anyone and my favorite bit (usage experience for people using things you crafted) was cut early on and is never mentioned except by me :)

Still I think a comparison of the two games does provide a means by which suggestions can be offered to improve SWTOR.

1. Multi-person vehicles - this can be added through Guilds and/or through the Legacy system. Vehicles could become big enough to move a party around as well as offer a vendor , med station, and mail box. With the right upgrades of course.

2. UGC/Player Events - Again some of this can be linked to guilds and to the legacy system. Perhaps even allowing a player to use shadows of his characters as NPCs in the UGC. In some ways this could solve a complaint: players have been wanting quests without all the voice over and cut scenes. UGC could be decidedly non-cut scene oriented to offer up these quests.  Ideally they could release something akin to what Bethesda does for its Elder Scrolls games. That way items could also be created. I will say however, that there would need to be someone(s) dedicated to handling IP issues considering how liberally some players would play with names and story arcs.

3. Faction Warfare & Space Combat - Space Combat in SWG was not that great, but it certainly is better than SWTOR.  If guilds are really getting capital ships as a guild bases, these could and should be allowed into space combat and faction warfare. The capital ships could eb so damaged they have to be repaired to get the base functions back online.  I absollutely agree there should be planets fully dedicated to open world PvP without any major quests associated.

4. Player Housing - I do not mind instanced housing as long as one could decorate it. For that matter, instanced crafting malls and guild bases as well. Its not perfect, but it would add some socialness to the game.

Hey look, an X-Wing.

Anyone remember those?

Originally posted by bobfish

Only needs to be one point on the list...

 

1. Every single sandbox element from SWG!

This is a great list of things we are simply not going to see much of again. Everything he mentioned I would like to see but we won’t get it because:

Mutliperson Vechicles – MMO’s are designed with soloers first and foremost now, they only need single seaters.

Storytelling/Player Events – Only used by roleplayers, a minority designers gave up on before they gave up on groupers.

User Generated Content – This could be new content for free as far as designers are concerned, for all the ones on this list, this is the one of the most likely to be seen again. But it is design intensive and is seen incorrectly as the domain of roleplayers, and anything with the label ‘roleplayer’ is the kiss of death as regards developer time.

Factional Warfare – Always a winner in my eyes, solving issues like ganking and introducing players new to pvp in a much more game friendly way. Design intensive though, often needs two separate PvE paths, but SWTOR has that. Of all the list this is the most natural for SWTOR.

Space Combat – This would require more development time than Factional, so less likely to see. It would transform the game though and could be very solo friendly which is all they care about these days. So you never know. If the add this I could go back to SWTOR, it would be that much of a game changer.

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Threatlevel0

Have to say I was really letdown by your list...

 I would of went with the focus on open world planets, open world PvP like Bounty Hunting (no instanced pvp such as battlegrounds, arena,etc) the crafting, the professions skill system, one character with the ability to untrain and train skills, no levels, player cities, reasons for players to go to buildings such as cantinas/taverns.   

 But I guess everyone has their own taste.  I guess I would summarize mine under all the immersive, social aspects of SWG, rather than multi-person mounts...

I'm pretty sure they were trying to be realistic; offer suggestions that might be somewhat do-able.  I could actually imagine multiplayer vehicles, for example.  provide tools for player events, etc.

Your suggestions add up to "make TOR into SWG".  Even big maps like Hoth and Tatt would never accommodate player made cities, for example.  You'd have to rewrite the whole game.

 

I can see player cities being more do-able than player generated content, as the worlds are designed around the stories that Bioware created, and does not have game altering mechanics. In SWG you had the mission terminals, and the missions were generic. In CoH you have generic missions and it varies behind the same door. In STO it also has generic missions via the Anomilies in places like the Delta Volanis cluster, which loads up a random mission. You do not have this sort of thing in SWTOR

Player cities in SWTOR could be done similar to what LOTRO has, instead of getting the "Exhaustion Zone" warning, they could make an instance assecsible to enter and you go in pre-made player cities, and then buy houses. Better still obviosuly, you have an area where it is like SWG, but the LOTRO approach probably is more feasible

Hoth certainly would not have houses / player cities, but Tatooine could, and even in SWG not all planets could have player housing / cities - eg Dathomir, Endor, Kash, Musty

Sadly I do not see any of these things happening in SWTOR now, as even when the game just got off the ground and was doing well, Bioware were reluctant to consider these ideas, and now with all the layoffs, probably will never happen.

Another thing they could easily add in some form is Beast Master / Creature Handler, as they have the Companion system, which is similar, although may not be able to speak to the pets!

Originally posted by Xstatic912
Can many of you say with a guarantee that if they went the swg route the game would be better off? The game was waayyy over-budget, and as such they choose to try and mimic the most popular mmo with the star wars ip...
Now let's just say its still over budget, and they choose to build on what made galaxies good.. Do you think it would pull in the sub numbers and keep those numbers for more than a year, that they needed to pull in?

These guys build Tor with the idea that they wanted to capture those players that were use to wow but tired of that setting, and as such it was a safer bet than to have built upon galaxies style.
As someone yes in another topic elsewhere "No dev has found a way to bring a sandbox style game mainstream or acceptable by masses"..

With this being Bioware first mmo, I doubt they would get the sandbox thing down, plus with a over blown budget, I doubt such a game would have pull in the numbers and keep rising like the had envision (we all know how that vision went)...

Just my 2 cents..

It does not have to go the same route as SWG. There are simply just too many features missing, that are includied in other WOW clones, like LOTRO has player housing. STO has multiplayer space, companions, story creator and a bit of housing in your ships. City of Heroes has atmoshpheric flight, story creator. EQ2 has player housing, Beast Master and Dungeon Maker. WOW has Beast Master.

SWTOR is so restrictive, it makes all other MMOs seem like a sandbox!