I understand that these are initial impressions, but I think two things need to be said up front:

[1] Character Creation is not Cryptic's problem. It's NEVER Cryptic's problem. Cryptic's problem, the thing that makes them a second-tier MMO company, is gameplay. Their games are pretty, with nice customization, but they are uniformly boring, mindlessly repetitive, and noticeably buggy. What I will be looking for myself is a break from the past in terms of quality of gameplay. Do they deliver on fun?

[2] Combat is an issue in STO & CO. It's not fluid, nor particularly visceral or responsive. It's just sort of there, and slightly laggy. Cryptic combat historically does not have the responsiveness or fluidity of an FPS, or WoW, or other AAA games. So I will be looking hard at that.

TL;DR Cryptic is good at the window dressing but not the core gameplay, and that's why I don't play their other games. I'll be looking hard at NW from that perspective.

Originally posted by vesuvias

Originally posted by Morfeus641

Sure. I'll elaborate.

1) A fulfilling experience without quests, and without resorting to making the players make their own fun. The quest experience in MMORPGs was a direct answer to the void of MMO spaces that offered little beyond grinding for solo players. It is perhaps over-iterated at this point, but GW2 offers a bold departure---No quests! Still fun! Lots to do! How fulfilling exactly will it be to "wander the land exploring, and stumbling upon dynamic events"? I wonder. RIFT promised that rifts were the most amazing thing ever, but actually they are pretty formulaic, and after a week I started taking pains to avoid them just so I could get on with my day. Will GW2's dynamic content be the same?

2) World vs. world vs world PVP. Interesting. Will it matter? Will it be epic, or merely instanced? What is the purpose of doing cross-server PVP this way? What if your opponent servers are low-population? Is there a queue? It seems a risk.

3) Underwater combat. They've spent a surprising amount of time on this. They've clearly invested a lot of development effort into it. Why? It's never been a forte of MMO play. Historically underwater combat is buggy, annoying, difficult to manage, and less fun than standing on the ground. So why develop this to the extent they have? Nobody I know enjoys it. Let's assume that they've made it more fun than it's ever been before---will that matter to players? Or will they continue to avoid underwater combat in droves simply because dealing with the Z-axis is annoying?

SWTOR is taking a mild risk---that simply adding voiceovers will be enough to spice up MMO play. GW2 is taking a much greater risk by radically changing so many systems at once. I applaud them, but I know from experience that, as George R. R. Martin would put it, "words are wind." We'll have to try GW2 to see if ArenaNet's ideas are worth the effort spent talking them up. 

 

Avid reader of George R.R. Martin I see, that explains your extreme pessimism. :)

 

What you call extreme pessimism I call measured optimism. I'm hopeful, but not expectant. 

Originally posted by Alot

Originally posted by Morfeus641

Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste. 

My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.

On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.

I would really like some people to point out EXACTLY which things ArenaNet will have hard time delivering on. Most of the time them sceptics seem to be avoid the details.

 

Sure. I'll elaborate.

1) A fulfilling experience without quests, and without resorting to making the players make their own fun. The quest experience in MMORPGs was a direct answer to the void of MMO spaces that offered little beyond grinding for solo players. It is perhaps over-iterated at this point, but GW2 offers a bold departure---No quests! Still fun! Lots to do! How fulfilling exactly will it be to "wander the land exploring, and stumbling upon dynamic events"? I wonder. RIFT promised that rifts were the most amazing thing ever, but actually they are pretty formulaic, and after a week I started taking pains to avoid them just so I could get on with my day. Will GW2's dynamic content be the same?

2) World vs. world vs world PVP. Interesting. Will it matter? Will it be epic, or merely instanced? What is the purpose of doing cross-server PVP this way? What if your opponent servers are low-population? Is there a queue? It seems a risk.

3) Underwater combat. They've spent a surprising amount of time on this. They've clearly invested a lot of development effort into it. Why? It's never been a forte of MMO play. Historically underwater combat is buggy, annoying, difficult to manage, and less fun than standing on the ground. So why develop this to the extent they have? Nobody I know enjoys it. Let's assume that they've made it more fun than it's ever been before---will that matter to players? Or will they continue to avoid underwater combat in droves simply because dealing with the Z-axis is annoying?

SWTOR is taking a mild risk---that simply adding voiceovers will be enough to spice up MMO play. GW2 is taking a much greater risk by radically changing so many systems at once. I applaud them, but I know from experience that, as George R. R. Martin would put it, "words are wind." We'll have to try GW2 to see if ArenaNet's ideas are worth the effort spent talking them up. 

Decent list, though I wouldn't put Aion on it as a matter of personal taste. 

My issue is the author's perception of SWTOR vs. GW2. Both games look fantastic, but I'm going to have to go on record as saying that GW2 has way more hype to live up to than SWTOR. At the end of the day, SWTOR is a solid step forward in MMORPG gaming, but also a cautious one. BioWare rightly approached the game's design by keeping (and polishing) all traditional MMORPG elements while addiing a single new one---the full voiceovers. It's a smart move.

On the other hand, GW2 is promising some amazing things. Too good to be true? Possibly. Overhyped? Most definitely. I hope they deliver, but I'll believe it when I experience it.

Limiting the group size to four allows maximum flexibility and minimum hassle. The smaller the group, the less acute the dps/tank/healer population imbalance becomes and the easier it is for dps to find groups. Furthermore, in SWTOR you can bring your companion into a flashpoint with you. So if it's just you and a buddy, hypothetically you could still run the instance. That's a pretty powerful form of flexibility, because what it really means is that there is a sliding difficulty scale and a sliding party size: 2, 3 or 4 players. Furthermore, the 4-person group size combined with the 4-class paradigm means less contention over loot that drops in the instance.

All in all, from where I'm sitting, the combination of these systems plus the group size is a win.

• 
  Sector space. Hate it. Hate the idea of it, hate the implementation.


• 
  Ground missions. Clunky, buggy, boring, repetitive. No animus whatsoever.


• 
  Fleet actions. Boring, shallow, repetitive.


• 
  Exploration missions. Exploration is the essence of Trek, but these were a total failure. Pointless repetitive drivel. Infuriating lack of respect for the IP on full display.


• 
  Lack of ability to walk around ship interiors. I hear this has been fixed since launch.


• 
  Can't beam down to Earth or the Moon. Can't fly around the Sol system. What?


• 
  Can't fly a shuttlecraft to dock aboard other ships or to land on planets. What?


• 
  All solar systems are single-planet. What?


• 
  Entire game world feels like a repetitive series of tiny boxes that you fly or run around in.


• 
  Grindy questing. Kill 3 birds of prey, then another 3 birds of prey, then another 3 birds of prey, then a vorcha battlecruiser. Rinse & repeat all night to level. Dear God, when will it end? (Answer: When I cancel my account.)


• 
  The Foundry. This came along after I quit but confirmed my suspicions: nobody at Cryptic gives a flying fig about developing a large, immersive, meaningful world. Instead, they divert effort into allowing players to create petty content, thus absolving themselves of the need to approach development comprehensively. The Foundry is a shallow, cynical sham---and also the essence of Cryptic Studios. What bugs me is not that Cryptic makes half-assed non-social MMOs, but that they do it under the pretense of creating world-class AAA MMORPGs. Let's call a spade a spade, and a second-rate company a second-rate company.