Originally posted by Icewhite

From their lazy, cookie cutter restating of other player's opinions, the devs just may be right.

But in all likelihood, both sorts of hyperbole are equally untrue.

Here is another.

There are 2 basic mmo gamers out there. You either sitting on the fence hollering, pointing and laughing at the herd of cows or you are jostling around in the mud looking for some grass that hasn't been trampled and crapped on.

OP missed option four in his where do we go now list:  Saying that themeparks were a nice distraction but for a truly sustainable game it's time to go backwards to go forwards, back to the sandbox.

Good article, but there remain a few important things to say.

A) Bioware brought this on themselves but categorically putting away EVERY attempt to slow down the game with sandbox elements with the phrase "this isn't about Uncle Owen". I call this "Uncle Owen's revenge". They could and should have added sandbox elements, we here talked about this for all the years of SWTOR development, but they felt they were above the need of advise.

B) Too many quests are too mindless "kill x" or "use X terminals", despite the pretty story package they are in. Post-Cata WOW had WAY more interesting and diverse quests, like transforming me into an owl and spying on the enemy and whatnot. Here it's too much like in STO "kill all that moves".

C) The game sevely lacks any social aspect that kept us playing slower and longer in MMOs of old. This is solo, solo, solo and a bit figleaf grouping and RIEN social ascpects. Yeah you can unlock Princess Leia bikini with social gaming. Yowza.

D) The idea to give people such abstract things like "coins" to exchange into equally abstract "mods" is the ultimate death of motivation. Where is the fun to have a cool quest gear, fitting to the regional theme? If I make those LONG and tiresome Taris bonus quests, all my Jedi Sage got was a same looking grey skirt! NOTHING special, funny or unique looking, just another same skirt in the same pattern which I can buy 100s of at the Auction House. HOW is that supposed to motivy me to do all those bonus quests? NONE of these have ANY really cool or desirable looking stuff, it's all the generic same stuff you get from normal drops or crafted. And don't even get me started about the horrific looking PVP gear from the so called "endgame".

[mod edit - let's stay constructive]

Good article.

I agree with your thoughts on the matter. I started out in DAoC when it was released. Getting to 50 in vanilla DAoC took many many months of playtime. It actually meant something to hit that goal.

Nowdays speed levelers are considered hardcore players. Rushing through an easy themepark game like ToR does not a hardcore player make.

Most of these so called hardcore players wouldnt last a month in some of the older games where you couldnt hit max level inside of a week.

Oh well. Just another reason why I think I have out grown the MMO genre, or maybe it has out grown me o.O

Originally posted by Zekiah

Originally posted by Distopia

 

Uhmm you couldn't pick up items off player vendors in the bazaar, it gave you a WP to the vendor and that's it. That's how it was before the NGE anyway after I have no idea.

That could be, and why I remember player-cities so bustling. I know that they raised the limit on the bazaar later on and I'm pretty certain you could get the item instantly from the bazaar. I think the limit was 25k credits.

At any rate, SWG was on the right track with cities but they kept messing things up. Remember when cantinas and hostpitals were slammed? Man, good times. 

Our city was always bustling even up to NGE, and somewhat after for the remnants that stayed behind, they actually moved the city off Lok to right outside restuss after the PVP additions there, on free come-backs it was packed all the time (not sure if it was during regular play). I agree player cities in SWG were great.

Originally posted by Saxx0n

There are 2 basic mmo gamers out there.

Attempted establishment of a false dichotomy, instantly rejected.  But let's read on for giggles.

You either sitting on the fence hollering, pointing and laughing at the herd of cows or you are jostling around in the mud looking for some grass that hasn't been trampled and crapped on.

With the expected results, a silly analogy that's clearly untrue.  Yes, I might be pointing and laughing at the herd (but I suspect it's a different herd than you're thinking of).

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Originally posted by Saxx0n

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Originally posted by Icewhite

From their lazy, cookie cutter restating of other player's opinions, the devs just may be right.
But in all likelihood, both sorts of hyperbole are equally untrue.

---

Here is another.
There are 2 basic mmo gamers out there. You either sitting on the fence hollering, pointing and laughing at the herd of cows or you are jostling around in the mud looking for some grass that hasn't been trampled and crapped on.

---

Originally posted by jdnewell

Good article.

I agree with your thoughts on the matter. I started out in DAoC when it was released. Getting to 50 in vanilla DAoC took many many months of playtime. It actually meant something to hit that goal.

Nowdays speed levelers are considered hardcore players. Rushing through an easy themepark game like ToR does not a hardcore player make.

Most of these so called hardcore players wouldnt last a month in some of the older games where you couldnt hit max level inside of a week.

 

Oh well. Just another reason why I think I have out grown the MMO genre, or maybe it has out grown me o.O

But the problem is you have to find a balance where people will stay to make it profitable enough for a AAA development and not a shody B rate development with big ideas, but a crappy box to hold them.

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by Saxx0n

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Originally posted by Icewhite

 

From their lazy, cookie cutter restating of other player's opinions, the devs just may be right.
But in all likelihood, both sorts of hyperbole are equally untrue.

---

Here is another.
There are 2 basic mmo gamers out there. You either sitting on the fence hollering, pointing and laughing at the herd of cows or you are jostling around in the mud looking for some grass that hasn't been trampled and crapped on.

---

Where are the people who are finding the games they like by playing games, and chucking the ones they don't like?

 

I was thinking the same thing. I play what I have fun playing, drop what i don't

SWTOR screwed up in my opinion by going after WoW current leveling speed, but not having WoW's options for people when they got to the end.  Telling people in the months ahead stuff will come is not going to get people at high levels to stay around twiddling their thumbs.   If you are going to have speed leveling you better have a really good idea of what they will do at the end of the race.

Well written...

The reasons why gaming has gone down the "git 'er done" path are a reflection of today's gaming community. Cell phone games, flash games and browser games have dragged us into quick, mindless, "play during your lunch break" type of games with zero depth.

Apparently, we asked for these things because we can't be bothered(or don't have the mental fortitude) to play games that offer up long storylines, deep crafting, player economies or anything else that count as "immersion". Gamers ADD is here and flourishing unfortunately.

I believe that for games with all these features to exist, we'll have to rely on small, independent developers to provide workds that thrive on real world mechanics and enable us to enjoy a deep, engaging game keeping us busy for years.

Yup, I'm the gamer who takes ONE toon to max lvl(without sampling the other 8 classes first) and can spend hours at 6am gathering mats for crafting to provide my guild with awesome items. I purposely treat a new game like a glass of fine wine sipping it slow and tasting it instead of guzzling the entire bottle in one sitting...

NO

NO

NO

NO

Leveling is NOT FUN if leveling is all there is to an MMO.

FUN is PLAYING WITH FRIENDS. No matter what a damned counter says about your skill, level, faction status, advancement bar, reputation, whatever. FUN IS NOT A NUMBER but an experience.

It took months to me to ding my first 50 on COH. Was fun, but the funniest part was that on through the long journey I could team up with people no matter what level they were. Something that on the games I played later (AoC, LOTRO, Rift, Champions Online, ...) never happened again. Or, better, never happened with the same enjoyable teaming experience.

I don't mind if I have to grind countless hours until I reach the level cap. I do mind if most of that experience can be done solo or - worse - if the game doesn't give any incentive to do it together.

FINALLY! Someone who voices how I feel.  100% agree, to me leveling IS the Journey and is the reason why I would sub.  I got SWTOR day 1 and felt both comments mentioned above.  1) I felt that I was outlevelling content as I did every quest and bonus quest.  2) By the time I hit the mid 20s the linear aspects of the game became glaringly apparent and felt I really had no choice.  You really cant explore and are 'pushed' to go to the next objective.

I surprisingly went to an older MMO, Everquest 2 and so far has been everything I would expect from an MMO.  Levelling is still 'fast' but at least they give you options for you to level how you like by controlling XP (which is a great feature I dont understand why its not standard fare).

It would allow the 'locusts' (great term :) to blow through content, but allow us 'explorers' to turn it off and enjoy what they developed.

To put it bluntly why don't we pick up this discussion after GW2 launches and see if a locust article is wriiten on it. Mkay

"Then I blame the devs for actually listening to those people, for whatever reason, and for assuming the content locusts are representative of gamers as a whole. And finally, I blame WoW and other design teams for being so proud of their end-game content (justifiably or not, that’s not the point) that they pushed us into experiencing it as fast as possible – to the ultimate detriment of their own product and their own subscriber base."

Absolutely agree, I can understand having heirloom items to make leveling an alt faster then before, but leveling 1-60 for new players shouldn't take five seconds. They revamped the whole starter area in WoW to allow people to get to the end game like crazy fast and there really wasn't much there. There is no sidekick system in WoW never has been. Sad really. This combined with the fail gear treadmill system, they could have made their designs mean a little more to the public. Leveling is also an archaic form, just look at GW2, the only reason they have leveling is to control which zones you are doing at any given time. The rest of the game is sidekicking and downsizing to the zone you are in for balance.

The problem is static, pre-scripted, linear content.

If content dynamically generates on the fly, and alters based on environmental factors that are influenced by the palyers, then there is no end to content.

If I want a pre-scripted story-driven gamepaly experience, I'll play a single player game. I play MMOs to be part of a virtual world, which means I want it to grow and change based on my and other players actions.

Originally posted by Ausare

Originally posted by jdnewell

Good article.

I agree with your thoughts on the matter. I started out in DAoC when it was released. Getting to 50 in vanilla DAoC took many many months of playtime. It actually meant something to hit that goal.

Nowdays speed levelers are considered hardcore players. Rushing through an easy themepark game like ToR does not a hardcore player make.

Most of these so called hardcore players wouldnt last a month in some of the older games where you couldnt hit max level inside of a week.

 

Oh well. Just another reason why I think I have out grown the MMO genre, or maybe it has out grown me o.O

But the problem is you have to find a balance where people will stay to make it profitable enough for a AAA development and not a shody B rate development with big ideas, but a crappy box to hold them.

 

I understand what you mean.

But the definition of a " successful " MMO has changed drastically since the WoW subs  hit record numbers.

Poeple think anything with less than a million subs is tanking. When 10 years ago that was unheard of. A player base of 100-200k was a huge success.

When you try to make a game appeal to everyone and get mass #s of subs something gets lost. I understand its a business and money is king, but it seems like the holy dollar is the only driving force.

No passion or TLC into the design anymore to me. SWTOR isnt a bad game at all. But its entire design is to cater to the masses. Ending up with a decent game but nothing truly great. When playing SWTOR everything seems designed with the least amount possible to get by. UI, PvP, FP, GTN, Gear Grind, OPs, ect ect.    IMO all designed just to get by, no heart and soul into the design.

Sure its somewhat functional in most cases and does what its supposed to do. But thats about all it does.

Tell me the team designing these features actually put more than minimal functional thought into it and I will just have to disagree entirely.

Originally posted by Ausare

Problem with slow leveling is diminishing returns to the company.  Look at what is said about Eve now.  True or not Eve has a reputation that it is pointless to start now because you will not be able to do things in the game.  When a game first releases the content is great, but as the average level of players raises as the game ages slow leveling creates a barrier to new people that want to join and partake of the content the average level player is doing.  Content that requires groups gets harder to find people to do it.  Pretty much the whole reason after a while Blizzard would go back and change group quests to solo quests.  Low level mass content becomes a barrier.

 

Thats Why content should be soloable until max level.  This way brand new people can level on their own or group and then enjoy the same content as someone who has been max for years.

I still say devs need to add options.  Give me the ability to turn XP on or off.  Give the ability to have a max level person 'downgrade' their level to play with a low level (to show them the ropes, etc).

MMOs today from a social/longevity standpoint are lacking useful tools to support it.

This is great article for us from the 'old school' mmo times, but sadly it will just fall on a majority of deaf ears these days.