All Posts by someforumguy

Ive played WoW, LOTRO, AO, SWG, EQII and really think that PVE and PVP combatmechanics are really easy in those games. If you want a PVP combat system based on playerskill with a longer learning curve, check Guild Wars. Forget the MMO symantics debate for a sec because that combat system can be used in a 'real' MMO too.

For PVE I also think that a high max lvl is a problem. If people get the chance to grind their toon to a higher lvl and then start a quest 20 lvls below them, it turns the whole PVE into nothing but a waiting chamber for max lvl. No skill needed. Worse even if a max lvl player can take a low lvl player by the hand and give him/her an easy ride to max lvl.

Get rid of lvls, and gear importance and add more type of skills on top of the typical heal, (de)buff, dmg. Im thinking interrupts, knockdowns, (re) applying and removing (by your opponents) buffs during combat. Even adding twitchy combat where you can dodge missiles/grenades could be more interesting then a simple buttonspamming buff'o'rama using autoaim like current SWG PVE/PVP. It is just a lot more difficult to design then the 'classic' (read booooooring) punchingbag tactics PVE of WOW, LOTRO and SWG.

PVE makes it difficult for me to keep playing SWG. Crafting,spacecombat, my city, some queststories, beast mastery and the exploring are very interesting.

The PVE combatmechanics however are one of the most bugged Ive seen in MMO's. Mobs that stand inside you. "Can't see target" msg when a mob has a foot/paw behind a little rock, while they keep shooting you meanwhile. Droideka's with a huge target rectangle making you target your droideka every time instead of the hostiles..random target selection bug with tab (friendlies in space and ground) etc etc

The only way to deal with that in a slightly efficient way is to use auto aim and repeating auto attack toggle. And that just makes PVE very shallow in this game because of the basic set of specials (compared to other MMO's)for combat professions .

So I really think that players who expect a real challenging and dynamic PVE environment and dont care much about the sandbox idea, will be disappointed with SWG.

Housing/city system,Traders and their vendors (also the way you get resources) is what makes SWG special imo.

PVE is just your run of the mill combat, but at least  it is sci-fi. So could be refreshing if you only played fantasy the last years. Oh, it's also full of bugs. Only used tactics in ground PVE is that of a punching bag.

Space missions can be very nice, story wise and the action. And is also challenging in an more interesting way imo (unless the lame ppl who bring a master pilot friend with the big guns).

PVP is nothing special either. Just stacking mods on armour and buff untill you drop. And then stand 2 feet of each other pressing buttons.

If the devs could make the Galactic Civil War period more apparent, then ground PVE and PVP could be made actually interesting.

Originally posted by Yeebo

The basic style of the armor hasn't changed much.  If you like WoW style high fantasy/ anime stuff, it certainly won't appeal to you.  Apart from a few particular helmet designs, I like the more realistic style, personally.  But nothing is for everyone. 

Well, ok maybe a few things like sleep and breathing...but I think you get my point.

You shouldnt assume that players who dislike LOTRO armour , like WoW armour. WoW armour is at the opposite of the scale imo. I mean braziers and axeblades on shoulderguards? wtf?

But still, LOTRO (especially crafted) armour lacks diversity imo. Different schematics, but same look. Also the colouring of armour doesnt make much sense. You expect to see rims to be recoulered with dye or other visible parts of the armour. But instead you see this smear from top to bottom, over the metal parts and leather parts.

The armour textures are also just plain textures, because the armour models lack detail. Imo they look very much out of place in the beautifull LOTRO world.

Originally posted by SioBabble

My level 90 Jedi had no problem at all with 3 level 90 mission lair mobs, imp NPCs.  He wasn't even wearing robes, just some loot drop Jedi armor items that were well below the protection that knight robes could offer.

But the fairly noobish BH was stopped cold by two levels below him elites.  He was XP and chance to heal on hit buffed, as well as some more points in constitution at the time.  He was not medic buffed.  Was using capacitor overcharge weapon buff, and the elites were just not killable for him.

Mind you, he's taken on elites near his own level recently with expertise in assault/ambush for lower action/higher damage, and of course at higher levels can get more out of entertainer buffs, and has less trouble, but they're not easy fights by any means.  Greyfeather the enraged carrion spat on the Coronet farmer quests was a near thing, and he had five levels on Greyfeather.  He can survive three on one confrontations with blue cons, where back in his 20s if he had more than two on him he'd incap for sure. 

Oh, and XP doesn't increase for elite mobs, unlike in WoW.  SWG didn't steal that detail from Smedley's favorite game.

So the mathematical progression is just not there as you level...mobs your own level become less of a challenge as your level increases.

I'm sure people discoverd this on TC, it was reported, and of course ignored by the devs.  They just do not pay attention when their publishes are found to be flawed.

If your lvl90 Jedi had to start over at lvl5, he would severly get owned trying to kill 3 mobs of same lvl without improved healing or improved saberblock.

If you level and get hold of several expertise boxes, you notice how it gets easier. This leaves me thinking that the increased mob toughness (has nothing to do with difficulty) is aimed at the endgame. They just ignored the new player who has to level through Legacy and needs to put up a fight in a bunker against 3 or 4 mobs.

And with some professions it is worse then others. Also the amount of credits you have. Play with the armour you get from levelling and you will be incapped 10 times over. Play with a capped or even better layered capped set of armour with attachments, droideka and personal shield and it gets easy (veterans have that option).

The whole balance is gone for the new players.

I think SWG is a great game, but the combat mechanics are severly lacking. PVP in this game would only be interesting with raids on strongholds or with strategic points you would have to conquer.

At the moment it is simply a defense stacking gear battle with the tactics of a punching bag. O and the buffs..it gets silly if you look at some players how long the row of different buffs is that they have.There is also a reason why several classes are not or just very rarely used in PVP.
It is rare that you see groups working together. SWG has nice spacecombat, great crafting, nice low lvl quests but one of the least interesting combat mechanics. With just one destroyed city where most players PVP, it is just plain meh.

Edit: Also ignore the vets that didnt play other games for 4 years. They simply dont realise >< And worse thing is they keep moaning about pre CU. This is putting a lot of new players of SWG. Especially those Elder Jedi who want to stay uber at the cost of new players because they 'worked' so hard to unlock something (afk grinding on Ryatt trail). At the same time those same Elder Jedi ignore other vets that maybe have grinded as much as they did, but not to unlock something. So its not noticable. It is fun drama if you are a watcher from the outside, but as player who wants to see that game moving forward, the veterans are severly frustrating spoiled little brats (not all of them,the rest has strong flamesuits)

Originally posted by Hexxeity

Welcome to every MMOG economy ever.

In any game where it's possible to twink, people will earn easy money with their high-levels and drive up prices.

Actually, in any system with insufficient checks on capitalism, the rich will always get richer and the poor are not even allowed a chance to compete.  The wealthy love this model, and most poor people don't understand it well enough to know they are being screwed.

The OP isnt talking about the player economy. He is talking about having to buy skills and max armour (from npcs). Those are set prices and not dependant on the player economy. There used to be places where players could earn loads of money in relatively short time. Multiple sets of FoW armour were possible (most expensive armoursets, just expensive for looks). If you would try that now, you will need far more time to get the same amount of gold. That is what the OP is talking about.

Vets got it easy (I know because I made enough to never need to farm in GW again) and new players have to put in loads more time to gain the same amount.

I have to agree with the OP, I played from the beginning and before Factions was released, gaining FoW armour was easy as pie, because you could solo UW with a 55hp monk. (Especially before the AOE update) With griffons still  outside Augury you had the chance to obtain loads of golden weapons and perfect mods.

Compared to now, its as different as night and day. I do have FoW myself on my monk (dont like the other sets) and understand that it used to be easier to obtain. In the newer chapters, skills are a goldsink now too. So there is more costs and less profit over time compared to the first chapter.

Players from my guild had multiple stacks of ectoes when the changes to make farming more difficult went life. To bad some of them dont appreciate the fact that they were so easy to get back then. But instead scorn everyone who complains about the situation now.

Originally posted by Jackdog

 

Originally posted by someforumguy

 

Originally posted by Jackdog

 

Originally posted by someforumguy

Geez, what's the big deal. Every MMO player who demands some depth in a game and plays LOTRO , realises soon enough that LOTRO is just another flavour of the WOWtype shallowness. But this is apparently what the masses want. You know up front that games like WoW and LOTRO will draw the most people. They simply don't want a game where you have to think. Most people are just shallow like that. I mean if it works with television programs, why not with games. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit boring to my taste.

so educate me. What MMORPG requirres a lot of thought , say on the level of chess or even checkers?. All these games are is a time sink in my opinion. I love it when someone tells me how challenging these games are.

 

~shrug~ of course I guess if clicking a button and chatting are a challenge and constitute in depth thinking for some people then so be it.

 

If Im talking about depth in a MMO, that would be the crafting and survey system in Star Wars Galaxies. Or crafting in Vanguard. Or PVP in Guild Wars. Or Beast Mastery in SWG. I also have my hopes up for the combat system of The Chronicles of Spelborn, And I hope that Funcom can make character development interesting again like it was in Anarchy Online. Stupid talents ftl! (or traits for that matter).

The worst part is, that I like the quests in LOTRO. Finally a new MMO that doesn't give questmarkers and a nice story. But guess what?

The guild I've been in has several people who kept spamming coordinates in guildchat or fellowship chat. Ive learned that most of them are using walkthroughs! How sad is that? Even the little depth that LOTRO has, gets barely used because many players prefer to use questguides.

Incredibly annoying if you are in a group with people like that. They dont give you the chance to read the quest description, but already know where you have to go because they got it from some shite quest guide.

It is like the two months that I played WoW. All those people that don't care to die and rush into caves, because of the 'well, it is cheaper to repair armour then buy hp potions' attitude!

So indepth = time consuming and tedious is what you are saying then?

 

You might have considered SWG ceafting indepth, but to me it was more like a second job. My first hour and a half online each day was devoted to checking harvesters, refilling my merchant and looking for new resources. That was fun for the first million or two credits but after that is was just the same old same old every day. Got to the point by the end of the first six weeks after release I was making excuses on why not to log in and quit to try Horizons when it released. Went back to DAOC when that proved to be a disaster and stayed there till EQII's beta. I actually liked EQII's crafting a much more than SWG's once they got rid of the interdependence. But I stray off topic here.

You are right LoTRO is not for you, it's just a game. But I wish you luck in finding a second life. LoTRO is just a game. A way to while away a couple of hours and socialize with online friends. It does that extremely well though.

What a cheap shot. You pick out a part of SWG crafting that takes time (timesink in a MMO? how odd! ) and simply ignore the other examples I gave and start nitpicking on this one.  What about melting stacks of ore in LOTRO, which is consuming time with you actually doing nothing at all? (start melting some stacks of dwarven iron and then melting them again into Westernesse). You know that perfectly well that every MMO has timeconsuming bits (good luck with upcoming faction grinding! ) which you have to repeat to get anything done. Furthermore you dont even know which MMO im playing atm and simply assume it is SWG.

Actually you just showed with your example that you dont need much time. You do your harvest collect run (which is a lot faster then mining nodes in LOTRO btw). You check the vendors and log out if you dont have the time for the rest of the day. You dont even have to log in every day as crafter. Only if you are one of those people who made the choice to join a demanding guild (which every MMO has).

Well, you have your game and I wish you a lot of fun. Just try not to be the LOTRO missionary so much. There are simply people who dont like LOTRO or WOW because it is in some ways to restricted. PVP'ers who dont like gearbased PVP(to much mandatory PVE time investment needed) and play a more team and skill-based one instead (Guild Wars), Crafters who fall asleep when melting ore for quite uninspiring looking armoursets and like the hunt for top quality resources (as opposed to travelling the same road over and over again). Or someone who just sees PVE combat for what it is in MMO's . An easy and uninspiring clickfest where people call the role of punchbag (tank), kiting (o you dont want to be hit on the head?) and healing (what else are you going to do with those skills?) tactics. In some MMO's quests are interesting enough for me to actually play PVE. LOTRO was one example, but with so many players rushing through a questguide, it even destroyed that aspect for me.

O, try farming in LOTRO. If you want to know about timeconsuming tedious repitition. Another fun idea wasted into poor execution. Blegh!

Originally posted by Jackdog

 

Originally posted by someforumguy

Geez, what's the big deal. Every MMO player who demands some depth in a game and plays LOTRO , realises soon enough that LOTRO is just another flavour of the WOWtype shallowness. But this is apparently what the masses want. You know up front that games like WoW and LOTRO will draw the most people. They simply don't want a game where you have to think. Most people are just shallow like that. I mean if it works with television programs, why not with games. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit boring to my taste.

so educate me. What MMORPG requirres a lot of thought , say on the level of chess or even checkers?. All these games are is a time sink in my opinion. I love it when someone tells me how challenging these games are.

 

~shrug~ of course I guess if clicking a button and chatting are a challenge and constitute in depth thinking for some people then so be it.

If Im talking about depth in a MMO, that would be the crafting and survey system in Star Wars Galaxies. Or crafting in Vanguard. Or PVP in Guild Wars. Or Beast Mastery in SWG. I also have my hopes up for the combat system of The Chronicles of Spelborn, And I hope that Funcom can make character development interesting again like it was in Anarchy Online. Stupid talents ftl! (or traits for that matter).

The worst part is, that I like the quests in LOTRO. Finally a new MMO that doesn't give questmarkers and a nice story. But guess what?

The guild I've been in has several people who kept spamming coordinates in guildchat or fellowship chat. Ive learned that most of them are using walkthroughs! How sad is that? Even the little depth that LOTRO has, gets barely used because many players prefer to use questguides.

Incredibly annoying if you are in a group with people like that. They dont give you the chance to read the quest description, but already know where you have to go because they got it from some shite quest guide.

It is like the two months that I played WoW. All those people that don't care to die and rush into caves, because of the 'well, it is cheaper to repair armour then buy hp potions' attitude!

Geez, what's the big deal. Every MMO player who demands some depth in a game and plays LOTRO , realises soon enough that LOTRO is just another flavour of the WOWtype shallowness. But this is apparently what the masses want. You know up front that games like WoW and LOTRO will draw the most people. They simply don't want a game where you have to think. Most people are just shallow like that. I mean if it works with television programs, why not with games. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit boring to my taste.

Omg, someone is actually defending the OP.  The OP is not suggesting a higher fee in general for future games, but for one specific that has been under development for years already. It makes no sense so close to release suddenly offer as consumer to pay a higher monthly fee. It is just throwing money away at this point!
The OP is clearly a troll, because he ignores every sane business argument in this thread. Why is this still in game suggestions anyway? And please stop the stupid car analogies, geez! You dont need an analogy to understand that the OP is simply enjoying himselves with all the people who take his suggestion seriously

Anyway, you have always the option to donate a gaming company money on top of the monthly fee, so OP go for it! Invest in the future!

Funcom is a commercial company. To offer to pay a higher monthly fee as customer is simply a bad deal. Especially without knowing what the endresult will be. A commercial company wont feel a commitment to such generosity. You have no way of telling that your offer to pay 5$ more a month will improve something. The op is either a troll or stupid. The comment about the snicker bars make me suspect he is a troll.

Ive played on EU servers. Have a lvl42 Smuggler and a lvl35 trader. So far it has been mainly a sologame. I find it very difficult to get answers in game from other people, Most players on the EU servers I tried simply ignore you. It has been the first time that I seriously got angry about the ingame community. I even prefer the typical kiddie remarks over this, as long as there is at least someone who tries to give me an answer.
You do the intro, get dumped on Tatooine with the start of the legacy quests. If you are lucky you find other new players that are as noob as you. For the rest you have antisocial geeks and afk dancers. Blegh!

Originally posted by Ozreth
I hate to beat the horse but Ive been wanting to say this for a long time. I dont play this game so dont think im some fan boy trying to back it up BUT I will say that it is OBVIOUSLY an MMORPG



GET OVER IT! You didnt invent the term MMORPG. Its not what YOU think an MMORPG is in your head its about what the true definition is. the M M O R P G tell you exactly what it stands for and as you can see above it IS an MMORPG.

Originally posted by StanlyManly

Originally posted by donaldduck

Main reason is quite simple - people are blinded by the branding.

If this was not Lotr, there would be about 1/10 of the people talking about it and even less playing it.
It would be rated below DAOC, RYZOM and COH and thought of as a simple but bland starter MMO, certainly not 'THE BEST' as many people are shouting.

I think that is another huge factor as well.  If this game was called... Swords and Sorcery Online... people would probably have a far different reaction to it.  As I've said in several posts though, once people get over the "ohh ahh" factor of it being LOTR, they'll see it for the game it is, and opinions will change.