Originally posted by mmoDAD

What I'm about to say is simply my own opinion.

THIS GUY IS A WORLD CLASS BUFFOON. He's cocky, arrogant, and completely oblivious to what sustains a MMORPG.

I remember his lame little remark to a fan (during development convention) about freedom and space exploration. Daniel's reply, "Did Han ever tell Chewie, 'Hey, let's just go fly off and dick around in space." This remark was just stupid. If he wants to play that game, when did Luke ever tell Obi-Wan, "Hey, let's go kill Vader for his pants..." or "Let's go to the Space Station and dick around on the Auction House... because there isn't anything else to do in this dead-ass game."

If this guy is on the project, I simply won't support it.

 

 

 

 Exactly, he was the same arrogant yoho spouting his sacred cows at TOR as he was for the NGE.  I said many times that he would exit TOR when it failed on his design misses.  Every time he opened his mouth it was sacred cows instead of sound MMO principles based on player choice and options. He couldnt even design MMO surnames rules right and we suffered over his arrogant approaches, time and again.  

 

 

Anyone who blames EA instead of these departing tools who ruined TOR's early years and exited appopriately, are missing the facts sorely.

- = SANDBOX = - was never the issue.  Sandbox is synonymous to "MMO", an expectation to immerse yourself in an avatar. 

SWG was the best of breed for MMO.  It was however released before it and its content was ready due to corporate greed (fact), and could never catch up.  That was followed by deplorably inept project leadership, young kids, who couldn't hold a vision, hold course to the vision, and close the gaps from premature release.  Their inept leadership resulted in chaotic, shoot from the hip development responses to community shouting, that was never on course, never consistent, and ineffective.  SWG failed solely due to SOE and project team leadership.

Because (young) "artists" in the industry can't tell that leadership was the issue, they all assume - = SANDBOX = - was the problem, so it became an outcast in an "MMO" industry, but the joke on them is that  - = SANDBOX = - is the very nature of an MMO.  You can't have one without the other.  Build a good MMO, they will come.  Build a good MMO, it is a  - = SANDBOX = - they're one and the same.

The MMO should allow you to explore your avatars world environment, and engage systems like crafting, or decorating, or trade, or PvP, or raiding, or exploration, or gathering/hunting, or being a shopkeeper, or being a community leader (in game), or coordinating any variety of cooperative ventures for any of the above.  All of the things the avatar should experience and the player with it.

I don't like the word - = SANDBOX = - because in truth, as stated in my intro, it is the nature of an MMO.  Despite the lack of content, SWG was the best of breed out of the gate, and its core systems, from crafting to class design, continue to be the benchmark for which MMO's are compared (and inevitably fall short).

SWTOR fails and falls into the same trap as all comers since SWG.  A small segment rushes to endgame and complains, and new content is rushed out so that the small segment is kept on the rails, but meanwhile everyone else who doesn't play 80 hrs a week and make it a career falls behind the grind, and doesn't complete 90% of the first round of endgame content, never gets the satisfaction of endgame content, before they're told there's a level cap increase and you're starting off the mousewheel again before you could ever enjoy getting off the previous grind to enjoy some fully geared endgame, teamwork, and accomplishment for your avatar.  It's a mouse wheel where nobody is ever satisfied. 

Remove the - = THEMEPARK = - level-cap perpetuated gear grind, so that more are raid ready sooner, so that raiding and PvP is a matter of progression of class skills, teamwork, and communication to beat tough challenges - rather than gearing up, class skills, teamwork, and communication to beat tough challenges.  

Mitigate the reliance on gear in the equation as a gate to participation and enjoyment.  Class skills, teamwork, and communication are not only fun, but plenty to deal with for any group without needing a gear grind to gate people.  With the gear grind, we never "arrive" to enjoy and tackle content - or at least most don't.  Fail for all involved.

I'm still playing SWTOR, down from 4 accounts in the household to 1 account, but like every other MMO since SWG, it's a limp ride, a pseudo MMO.  A pale imitation. 

The 4th Pillar is Fail



Been playing since early testing, and now I space thru all dialogue.  Why?

It's flat.  It's one-dimensional.  Other than the class story (even then) its completely flat.  Why?

Because Star Wars or any story is an ensemble cast, (Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia, Jaina, Allana, etc. etc.) the interaction of the protagonist with other characters that share the journey, and charm. 

Not in SWTOR.  In SWTOR, its an avatar moving from one stranger to another, to get the next task and a bonus to kill 15-50 mobs for extra credit.  One stranger, another stranger, it all blurs together and there's no ensemble.

The crew barely has any lines, and is a real missed opportunity.  They should have taken half the generic quests and just issued them out of the already in existence SWTOR Mission Terminals, and used the extra development time to significantly increase crew interaction during quest dialogues, and during rare companion quests.

As it is, its so dry, so boring, so flat, its like reading the worst of the Conan the Barbarian books, where he just wanders around with no supporting casts.

1.5 of 10 Points

I've given a lot of feedback to Bioware going back to early testing, and reading some of the threads here, am reminded of a fundamental issue I shared some time ago that I think is now biting Bioware hard with Live upon us. It's not helped with a lack of server-specific forums to help real people find good guilds.

The issue based on some hard truths.

1 - we're at the highest or most fundamental level human beings... People.

2 - for many, many reasons I could go on for pages about, it's quite challenging for adult players to find a good guild, a home, almost impossible.

Given those two truths, at the end of the day, we want to enjoy the game with nice people without hassles and drama. Good luck with that with most guilds!

What does Bioware do? With a game that by design, the average player will want to play many classes - if not all 8 and with diff LS DS configs it could be more? They made it so you'd not only have to search for and hassle with one guild community, and it's people and com tools, but bifurcated it into a mandatory need to find and hassle with one guild for each set of classes.

For adults, that is far beyond the realm of reasonableness, and only seves to bifurcate, confound, and add hassle to an already insurmountable "job" of community searches and expectations management. It's frankly absurd. Add again the lack of Search and server-specific forums for at least the short term, it's nothing short of a complete failure for human beings to successfully engage the Tor community beyond a single player game. Strategic failure.

Sorry, that's a prob with these forums and iPads.  It wasn't a wall of text when entered.  Had to hop on a real PC to fix it.

Story as a pillar? Have you ever played another MMO, Team Bioware? Every MMO I've played may not have been voiced, but line for line had more text/story per quest than the rote TOR "go do this, and get bonus quest to kill 15-50 mobs" at every stranger represented by an NPC. Lotro quests had a good 4x the volume of story associated with the typical quest, by my estimate.

And yes, quest-givers in TOR are strangers, every NPC is another stranger in a long list of strangers. The charm and depth of Star Wars (or any story other than perhaps Conan the Barbaian) is the ensemble cast that progresses character development and adds an environment we can engage as players in a story.

Here, there's no Leia, no Han, no Chewie, just one stranger after another doling out the next mundane quest. Now, they could have and could still give us that ensemble cast via our crew characters, and the rare times they speak up start to have that affect, but they are so rare as to be absent, and we're rating the game on how it is today, right? I'm sorry, but the Story element is not something TOR can claim as a strength. Voice, yes, Story, no way.

Aside, their customer service is in crisis mode, they don't respond anywhere near their quoted standard (24 hours), and in my multiple experiences is 3 to 5 weeks, or never. They have their forums in crisis mode, fire fighting, with Polls, Search, and even viewing your own posts disabled, providing zero value as a resource to players. They have limited forum categories, ignoring MMO 101, so that the outcome is that any posts made by players are buried on page 50 in 30 minutes regardless of which few forums you post in, including Customer Service Forum. There are no forums for servers, so finding guilds in your server is nearly impossible, and there's likewise no forums for such things as Suggestions/Feedback, Website/Forums Feedback, Companions, UI Discussion, or even Quests/Mission Discussion... A travesty of service value and competency in managing an MMO.

Let's talk sound for a minute. On most worlds, it's so quiet you're nodding off and all you hear is "schlop schlop" of your footsteps half the game or the buzz of a speeder the other half. Every once in a while sound blares to life during combat and it startles me awake. This lead me to load up the Tor CE soundtrack CD for the commute to the office to see what I was missing during the silence of gameplay. I kid you not, upon arriving home that evening the CD went in the garbage bin. What a colossal piece of trite commercial vapor. You'd think they'd have a fair opportunity to create some thematic music pieces to set the theme for each unique world. Nope, just trite garbage. I DL'd the soundtracks for the Homeworld game's instead, turned off in-game music so it wouldn't on rare occasions conflict with Homeworld, and gameplay during the long grinds improved quite a bit.

Finally, as a player for some time through testing, you just want off the theme park sometimes, and every planet/environment is just another theme park, whether on the rails of a planet or another, or space combat. For goodness sakes, an MMO can't be all theme park, it's so confining you want to scream.

Unfortunately, nothing from SOE or Sony or Schmedley will ever see another dime from me, ever.  Very seriously.  I haven't given Sony a dime since CU and NGE, technogeek that my household is, and never will - period.