I'm going to write a lot about TOR

[badfo]

In 2012 the game obviously did shit. They flopped with 1.2 and everybody left. In November 2012 it actually turned around a bit with the launch of F2P. They were constantly adding new stuff every six to eight weeks.

Then in April 2013 they launched 2.0, which was also the digital expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Added five levels, a new planet (Makeb) with a planet story that was better than many chapter stories from the various classes, and macronbinocular / seeker droid quests that have some of the best quests in the game. 2.1 brought a dye system which sucks but is better than nothing.

Since then it's been mostly downhill. They've definitely added stuff. But the patch cycle fell apart. You'd have a patch where the only content would be a nightmare mode version of a year old raid. Or when they rolled out space PvP, they did it over two content cycles (Cycle 1: early access for subs, Cycle 2: space PvP for everybody), basically using one patch over two patches.

Right now it looks like the game will go a full year without new raid content (the coming patch in August is rightfully assumed to not have any, which would put the next patch in October as the earliest a new raid will show up). June was supposed to bring the biggest update to the game yet (their words), but in March or so they announced housing (the big tentpole of that patch) would be pushed to August. Supposedly June (2.8) was supposed to have the second part of a storyline they call Forged Alliances, which was legitimately interesting. But then it didn't.

Here's what was in 2.8
-Slot machines on Nar Shaddaa. Just click and watch. Really.
-Nightmare mode for a raid released in October.
-A revision to group finder to make pick up groups for 16-man raids easier to put together, which was scrapped in two days and patched back to 8-man.

That was the result of what they originally described as their biggest patch yet.

Later I'll complain about PvP.

[Pewps]

PvP when I played was one of the worst CC-fests of any MMO I've ever played

[badfo]

PvP when I played was one of the worst CC-fests of any MMO I've ever played

I actually like the resolve system. I think it's fairly rewarding skill-wise, knowing when to break and such. They've taken away most 30m stuns and mezzes and made them 10m, which has cut down on a lot of the CC overload. Need to put slows and roots on DR though.

I wasn't expecting much from SWTOR PvP. But I ended up really enjoy Huttball. I think not embracing Huttball was one of BioWare's big post-launch mistakes. I think they stumbled on the mode by accident and didn't realize what they had. Should have rolled out new maps in first few months, had leagues, contests etc. It's what they did right and I still don't think they know that.

TOR 4v4 arenas are OK. Decent fun. Really hurt by no cross server tech. Group queue is non-existent on most serves. Solo queue (YOLOQUEUE) is up and down but OK for what it is.

What hurts is they removed ranked 8v8 for arenas. They admitted they never supported 8v8 (preseason for almost 1.5 years, no cross server, yanked from it's original patch 10 hours before the patch launched). They said they'd do better. Arenas have the same issues. Cross server really hurting it. BW refuses to do cross server. Nothing makes sense.

Here's the major PvP notes since launch:
-Added Novare Coast. Pretty fun, can always come back from any deficit.
-Removed Ilum PvP. Never replaced.
-Added Ancient Hypergates. Decent fun, most people still have no idea how to play it. Still get easy caps on idiots that don't understand how it works. Crazy.
-Removed ranked 8v8, added ranked 4v4.
-Added Quesh huttball map (just a few months ago, two years after launch... way too long).
-Added bolster in 2.0, which was supposed to bring up everybody's stats to a base level for level 55 PvP and PvP gear takes you beyond that. It was severely broken for the first six weeks after 2.0 and easily exploitable for 8 or 9 months after that.

I've played maybe an hour or so of PvP since the first arena season ended. New gear tier I have no desire to grind. Tested out their fixes for madness assassin (which were good, which makes me sad that there's another grind there) and that's it.

Tl;DR BW doesn't know what they did well and refuses to add basic support for PvP.

I'll talk about story later.

[pano]

I liked Huttball because a champion team would beat a team of champions, huehua. But seriously, it could be very fun with teamwork and whatnot, but often fell apart because people didn't understand their roles or objectives. High highs, low lows. Also CC was pretty rampant.

TOR: unsustainable from the outset. Could've been amazing if they'd been more forward thinking, and streamlined some of their story stuff. Got caught between making a good Bioware game and a good MMO, and came up short on both fronts. Anyway the lightsabers were pretty neat.

I don't really want to play at the moment, and it's too early to go back to Wow (roflpewps). Mayb I'll update DCUO teehee.

EDIT: omfg bolster just leave

[Pewps]

What happened to Ilum? Did they just get rid of it altogether?

[pano]

What happened to Ilum? Did they just get rid of it altogether?

They removed the PvP bit and replaced it with the Gree event, which is kinda neat. Recurring every couple of weeks though, so that's a bit weird. Why not make it permanent, or like, yearly? I dunno. You can get TRON armour from it though, so that's fun.

[badfo]

What happened to Ilum? Did they just get rid of it altogether?

The revamped it one or two times and then completely removed it. The Western ice Shelf is still there but it's almost completely empty when the Gree event is gone.

They removed the PvP bit and replaced it with the Gree event, which is kinda neat. Recurring every couple of weeks though, so that's a bit weird. Why not make it permanent, or like, yearly? I dunno. You can get TRON armour from it though, so that's fun.

They really slowed down with it so it seems more special, I guess. And it is fun for an event, but it's probably too irregular. But as far as the events they added after the first two (Rakghoul plague and Grand Acquisition Race, which were one-time only), it's by far the best. Rakghoul v2 is terrible, Bounty Event is terrible.

[pano]

Pewps I don't wanna stroke your measly ego, but you were right about Malgus. Killing him was dumb. In Hutt Cartel xpac they made Darth Marr into Malgus 2.0.

Plus I hate the Dark Council they have (human, human, human cyborg, human cyborg, human in mask, etc). Human-centric Empire really pissed me off. Rather have one derpy human cyborg in charge than 12 (or however many there are...).

[badfo]

Pewps I don't wanna stroke your measly ego, but you were right about Malgus. Killing him was dumb. In Hutt Cartel xpac they made Darth Marr into Malgus 2.0.

Plus I hate the Dark Council they have (human, human, human cyborg, human cyborg, human in mask, etc). Human-centric Empire really pissed me off. Rather have one derpy human cyborg in charge than 12 (or however many there are...).

I've never been more wrong about a character than Malgus.

When you fight him in False Emperor I'm all BUT YOU MAKE SENSE MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE I WANT TO BE YOUR BUDDY!

I don't understand it, especially since the next two years were all Dread Masters shit nobody cares about.

[isgrelindisguise]

I've been cycling through f2p mmos over the last few months and as much as I would like to see Web, or play around with lightsabers, I can't say I have any real desire to play SWTOR again.

[pano]

They should've just resurrected Revan (again) and given him a 3rd faction with 2 classes (Mandalorians and Grey Jedi), then gradually phased out the Empire and the Republic.

Would've made everyone happy. :]

[badfo]

STORY TIME.

Things I believe:
1) TOR presents its story better than any other MMO. DCUO is probably second. Nothing touches those two.
2) The overall quality of the total story is not as good as a BW single player game
3) There are parts of stories (some moments, some chapters) that are as good as single player games and even better.

Class stories:
There are too many. Eight is too many. Many are noticeably stretched or cover much of the same territory. Other parts are just bad. Favorites: Agent (all chapters), Smuggler (chapter 1), Trooper (chapter 1 and Jaxo), Knight (chapter 1). Realistically, six or so better stories would have been better. As is there's a lot of uninteresting fluff. Consular is most useless. Smuggler chapters 2 and 3 feel forced. Trooper chapters 2 and 3 pale in comparison to chapter 1. For some reason, they generally felt like they had to add boring shit on top of chapter 1s, which was frequently much higher quality compared to 2 and 3.

Also, Sith Warrior is the worst piece of shit ever. And a LS warrior doesn't make sense at all. Your character basically suffers from multiple personalities, except that's not what they intended. Terrible. Some of the worst story in any game I've ever played.

Consequences:
I'm fine accepting that you can't deviate too much in games like this. If you intend to add on, it's suicide to allow too much variation. But there needs to be some more meaningful deviation in between and in presentation to make up for it.

Originally you were allowed to kill companions. They should have kept this. This is part of why Sith Warrior is so terrible. There's no logical reason for a certain SW companion to be with the warrior after a certain point. And it's handled terribly in game. They clearly had a death scene, then it's basically fade to black and "well I hope you learned your lesson, mister."

Agent had an ending I didn't even know was possible until 9 or 10 months after the game launched. Why was only one class able to accomplish this? What were the other writers doing? Agent had five or so and at least one more in beta (I think).

Leveling:
This is a game where they should have tinkered with the idea of a really short leveling time for an MMO. It sounds dumb given they launched with so little content for cap, but I think more people would have replayed stories if it wasn't artificially stretched out.

Post-cap:
This was a big failure. Hit 50 and now what? Oh, regular MMO stuff. Their selling point was effectively non-existent post-50. Big mistake. They could have really messed with the formula here.

Future[/b}:
They keep saying continued class stories are not in the cards for the future despite acknowledging this is what they hear from their players and people that quit the game the most. This is bizarre. They spend months on space PvP and months on housing but don't see how they can still make money off this? They should release two $10 expansions a year. One with class story, one with Makeb-style stories. I don't know how they can be so blind.

[badfo]

I've been cycling through f2p mmos over the last few months and as much as I would like to see Web, or play around with lightsabers, I can't say I have any real desire to play SWTOR again.

I can't recommend the F2P model. It's bad.

Maybe when they release their next story expansion (supposed to be the end of this year but it feels like it's pushed into 2015) I'll be able to recommend it.

Right now if you subbed, you'd get RotHC for free (forever free, not just for the length of the sub), and you could get some enjoyment out of that, but I'm not sure the rest is very fulfilling.

[badfo]

They should've just resurrected Revan (again) and given him a 3rd faction with 2 classes (Mandalorians and Grey Jedi), then gradually phased out the Empire and the Republic.

Would've made everyone happy. :]

Hateful.

Empire in general is a mess. Sith PCs were given roles in the Empire that were too big, I think. Can you name any Dark Council members other than the Inquisitor and Marr? I can't.

There's a power vacuum that hasn't been addressed. Marr just waves it off basically on Makeb.

Republic at least has Satele.

Killing Malgus was such a mistake.

[Pewps]

I thought Age of Conan had a good story but no one cared to level that far

[isgrelindisguise]

I thought Age of Conan had a good story but no one cared to level that far

MMO leveling has been bothering me recently. It's hard to start off as a character with no abilities and still have almost no abilities when you're fifteen hours into the game.

[badfo]

I thought Age of Conan had a good story but no one cared to level that far

MMO leveling has been bothering me recently. It's hard to start off as a character with no abilities and still have almost no abilities when you're fifteen hours into the game.

I can't do it either. There's a double XP week going on in TOR and I can't be bothered.

I think this is where a game like TOR should have really shook things up. Just take out the MMO quests. Don't present it MMO style. Have the massively multiplayer part but take away this zone-by-zone question experience. Who cars if it's a little shorter? More time to work on other activities (this is the ultimate unrealistic simplification of development).

[fallenchicken]

I remember buying bioware's snake oil when they said TOR would be better than a kotor 3 because it'd really be, "Kotor 3 4 5 12". It was a watered down bioware game that couldn't have any payoffs. boo.

Maybe a massively multiplayer rpg with a story focus could work--especially a bioware one--just not regimented like an MMO. But I don't know. All I want right now is a bioware SP game.

The MMO leveling system is just exhausting and tired. I was never able to get too into TOR (or any mmo of late), so I can't judge it. I think I'm the problem. Except that bado's point that the leveling time was too long hits home. I remember getting really invested in a few characters and their stories at first, and then losing interest in the second act. For me at least, I just don't think I can get invested in a game that's designed to swallow up as much time as possible so I'll keep paying the $15 bucks. The future of the MMO genre is the shared sandbox style game--eventually someone's going to make a good version of a dayz-like game, and I think it'll open the door.

[isgrelindisguise]

I can't say there are many leveling systems I particularly enjoy but

- I liked how in GW2 I could get to level cap on 2 characters without stepping foot into the same zones for the entire grind.

- I like how I can probably get to level cap in DCUO in a day if I worked at it. But I don't like the DCUO grind itself. I also like that they haven't increased the level cap. I hated it when they increased the cap in WoW for TBC. I don't think I could play WoW mid expansion and have any desire to do real end game content. Come to think about it, I don't think I've had any real interest in WoWs endgame since Vanilla.

[badfo]

I can't say there are many leveling systems I particularly enjoy but

- I liked how in GW2 I could get to level cap on 2 characters without stepping foot into the same zones for the entire grind.

I liked this aspect of GW2 but I didn't like how you had most of your character's abilities worked out so early. It made the combat so repetitive. It was the ultimate artificial stretching of leveling content for me. Once I got bored with the combat I wished I could just do the exploration point things and none of the quest hearts.

I remember buying bioware's snake oil when they said TOR would be better than a kotor 3 because it'd really be, "Kotor 3 4 5 12". It was a watered down bioware game that couldn't have any payoffs. boo.

Maybe a massively multiplayer rpg with a story focus could work--especially a bioware one--just not regimented like an MMO. But I don't know. All I want right now is a bioware SP game.

I think they got part way there but weren't ambitious enough. it was basically BW story on top of a 2008-09 MMO....

The MMO leveling system is just exhausting and tired. I was never able to get too into TOR (or any mmo of late), so I can't judge it. I think I'm the problem. Except that bado's point that the leveling time was too long hits home. I remember getting really invested in a few characters and their stories at first, and then losing interest in the second act. For me at least, I just don't think I can get invested in a game that's designed to swallow up as much time as possible so I'll keep paying the $15 bucks. The future of the MMO genre is the shared sandbox style game--eventually someone's going to make a good version of a dayz-like game, and I think it'll open the door.

I think you need to be able to jump in an MMO and immediately be able to do fun stuff. It takes way too long to get to that in most games, and the reasoning is 100 percent because of the sub tradition.

[fallenchicken]

And if I were making an mmo today I'd look at the market and realize, "Oh, subbed mmo's are dying out. WoW made a billion dollars, but every other one has collapsed. It's a model of the past. Maybe we should do something different. Or let's make Wildstar and Elder Scrolls."

[badfo]

Elder Scrolls seems particularly cynical in that way. I thought other developers would learn from TOR but I guess they didn't like TOR didn't learn from those ahead of them.

Niche subs are possible. TOR has a decent amount as a niche product. EVE has stayed alive with niche subs. But I doubt that's what many of these games are aiming for.

Buy to play seems the way to go. Sell traditional expansions. Cosmetic cash shop.

[badfo]

Legacy:
I don't think most of the people here were even around for this to be more than number but it's one area that really bothers me.

Basically, legacy ended up being a system where you could buy perks for your characters on that server with credits and earn some by leveling characters. It didn't really make sense that you had to spend credits on it beyond a moneysink and in general I don't think they tried hard enough to connect your characters.

Suggestions they would never do:

1) Legacy should have been a skill tree. Every level you get to pick a perk. Want more XP from class quests? Pick that perk for this level. Want a GTN terminal on your ship? Pick that perk your next level.

2) Legacy gear. BW accidentally introduced a way to rip the mods from gear, put it into legacy gear, and mail it your other characters. Originally it just allowed you share gear or transfer mods to another character, but BW semi embraced it and now you can just share everything except impants, ears and relics. I think they should just go all the way. If I have that gear on my shadow, I just want to use it on my assassin. Don't make me mail it, just let me "equip" my character's gear from a tab or whatever. Current way just comes off half-assed, though it's better than nothing. Also let me use legacy mounts and shit.

3) Legacy companions. Let me use my alt as an AI companion.

As it relates to other MMOs, I think games should tie more and more stuff to accounts instead of characters. I'm almost to the point where I should be able to use same class characters as skins for each other.

[pano]

Legacy companions would've been great. More companion thoughts?

Respec any companion to any role. Might've helped get the death of He Who Must Not Be Named out of beta.

Fewer pinkskins. I just don't like this.

6 stories (merge the Jedi and Sith stories, but give the class maybe 3 ACS (fuck Marauders)) would've helped some of the companion writing, probably. Maybe they just spread themselves a little thin. And shared, optional companions should've been a things from the start. Maybe faction based, or maybe for everyone, who cares.

I feel like companions are one of Bioware's biggest strengths, and SWTOR didn't knock it out of the park, imo.

[fallenchicken]

Does the game ever reveal what happened to Revan and the Exile? I remember going to Revan's tomb or whatever during the early sith storyline.

Sorry to bring up Revan. Even years after the TOR forums, it's still a sore subject.