Slashdot Mirror
Further Details On the Star Wars MMO
Now that the recent announcement about Star Wars: The Old Republic has had time to sink in, specific details about the game are beginning to come to light. Massively, in particular, has a variety of interviews and in-depth looks at the classes, the combat, and the setting of the game. "When you play like a Jedi from 1 to max, and then decide to start as a Sith, you won't see any content that will be the same." They also discuss the leveling, questing and companion characters. "We want you to think of them as actual companions on your journeys throughout the game. Your actions are going to change how your companion characters develop." Eurogamer is running a preview of the game, and a wiki has sprung up to catalog all of the new information. Other tidbits: support for Star Wars Galaxies will continue; the new game will be PC only; and LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.
From TFA
Plus, since you're adventuring with your buddies that are playing other classes, they'll be telling you some of the exciting stuff they're doing. You're going to get tidbits that might really get you interested in playing one of those other classes. It's probably going to make you excited to try things out.
Wrong, we just want to choke underlings with the force.
Yeah, just as some of us still log into EverQuest from time to time. The key thing to remember about a Star Wars MMO is a large chunk of the market cares not for anything SW related. I would assume something like a Dune MMO would garner far more interest from fans and the unacquainted alike.
Maybe current play mechanics can't do a SW game justice... or maybe... just maybe... it's the fact it's a shallow and convoluted universe that's been raped by it's creator an anyone else with enough time to pen a novel to be sold at the local supermarket... Maybe...
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
..but a story alone can't carry a game. Look at all the other MMOs and their quests. OK, so much of the story in MMOs is more background than anything else, but generally the quests, the actions you need to complete the quests, are rather dull and uninspiring (which is why I like that in WAR you can level up completely via PVP). Kill beavers until they drop a single beaver testicle until you have 10. Fight a spell caster that's AI amounts to casting the same spell on you over and over again. Go to some stupid place in the environment where you need to right click the object. And so on. Questing in MMOs by itself, IMO, is very, very boring. The real question is, will the gameplay be fresh and exciting enough to justify the expansiveness and the story line, and if so, how well will it interact in PVP?
Additionally, endgame: someone might not care to play the other classes, even if the story and game experience is different. They have a top-level character, they don't want to just give him up. Will there be good endgame? No good endgame can kill an MMO, just look at Age of Conan.
The moment I saw there were kill quests, levels and caps I decided this wasn't the game for me. People continually say "levels are the only way". You know what, the reason Gygax and Arneson are seen as development genius' isn't because they gave up and went "but this is how it always is". They developed levels. It was a unique and innovative system for creating characters that can advance beyond their initial stats (or beyond a single enormous transformation, like a pawn into a queen).
But the days of the level are coming to an end (or so I pray). More and more RPG players grow tired of levels--most now see them as other gamers see installation time. "We can't start playing the REAL game until max level." But there are alternatives!
Games like Tri-Stat use character points instead of levels. Upon completing portions of a story, and as bonus points based on how well you played a character or any other number of things, you receive Character Points with which to buy customizable skills and gear. Some say they are like "levels", but the fact you start with 350 of them and they go into your stats, gear and skill acquisition make them a clearly different beast.
A lot of games have abandoned even that and just started pooling experience points directly into stats. Games like Pokemon (yes, its a child's game, but innovative never the less) used levels, but behind the scenes gave each stat a different experience bar that rose depending on your race and the opponent's you beat.
Some games have abandoned levels and abilities altogether, instead focusing on gaming skill. A lot of people just call these "fighters" or "FPS" + MMORPG mixes, but really they can become quite fun.
But the big problem I have with Star Wars having levels based on quests is simply that too many quests just don't make sense given the setting. Jedi weren't supposed to go forth and kill. They were supposed to negotiate first and try to avoid battle. Unfortunately, there's no good way of mass-diplomacy aside from needlessly complicated (and frankly lame) sets of dialogue choices that lead to a predictable (and, if you have something like Thottbot) reliable outcome.
Now if they could make a living and breathing game with characters to interact with that are controlled by GMs and other players who can actually make a difference in the world...
Unfortunately MMORPGs are scared of idiots willing to run around blowing up random planets just for fun. Leading me to another point. Actions should have consequences, the final knife in the corpse of this game (for me, of course). This is another WoW/EQ/MUD style game where nothing you do accounts for anything other than leveling and gear mongering. They claim you can change companion's, but lets face it. In the end your not changing the world around you. Your not really talking with other characters. Your a hamster in a wheel clicking away to get to the "next stage of power" to access more content that millions of others have or will access themselves.
Some people enjoy that. I personally don't. I wish I could diplomatically barter with another player for control over a star system's spice flow that we've worked hard to get control of. And I don't want that player to just be able to kill me (or have some other random player run up and kill one or both of us) without consequence. In some zones in WoW you can kill someone who attacked you without the local guards attacking you due to high reputation with that faction. But lets face it, if you just ran around killing people, eventually even a faction your considered a hero in would start viewing you differently.
But I'm a spoiled Tabletop nerd who has been given the ultimate game system--a living breathing human being who can flesh out a world custom tailored to the needs of me and my friends. That's a real GM. Current GMs in MMORPGs are no more than tech support and referees.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
So instead of making the Jedi and other players on an equal ground by, say, making the Jedi untrained-in-combat Padawans or something, everyone gets to be their own special snowflake with tens of thousands of legendary bounty hunters running around at once. Brilliant.
Lucasarts: What were your most popular games? X-Wing? Tie Fighter? Hmm... Make what everyone's wanted for a Looooong time, a MMO Star Wars starfighter game.
Load 128 players into a 100(Tie) versus 28(xwing) battle with a little briefing ahead of time as to the goals, maybe even include capital ship piloting and hyperspace buoys for tactics. Racing the Kessel Run, Speeder races, Blasting a womp-rat in your T-16; these things are fun, even more fun against other human-level intelligences. A Star Wars RPG? I've got old West End books for that, and it's sooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
>Ya, good luck with that.
Sniping WoW customers isnt that hard, heck I used to bullseye womp rats in my t-16 back home, and they werent much larger than most WoW players.
"If you think about it, though, Jedi get popped by people who aren't Jedi all the time. Not everybody's fantasy is to be a Jedi, believe it or not."
I'm rolling Bantha as soon as this comes out. Look out sand dunes! i'm so gonna be role playing all over your ass! Single file bitches!
It worked well for City Of Heroes. Every player in COH is, at least in the design guideline, equal to three minions _and_ a lieutenant. That's what's needed for a fight against a hero to be a 50-50 chance, you know, better have a potion (ok, "inspiration") ready.
But that's ok, because the NPCs are also generated in packs of 3 for a solo mission, or pretty much in platoons for an 8 player group.
And yes, nobody seems to have a problem with being in a city with a thousand super-heroes roaming the streets at any given time.
Generally, when it comes to MMOs, probably the only sane option is to just accept what works and is proven to work, and not think much about what would be "realistic". Starting from the original idea waay back that it would be unrealistic to have quests, because it would be unrealistic if 1000 people saved the same princess or killed the same arch-villain. It turns out that people actually get used quite easily to situations along the lines of,
"Ok, did everyone get Van Cleef's head?"
"Yep, I did."
"Wait, I've got to junk something and then I'll take it too."
"I killed him yesterday, thanks"
"Crap, my buddy disconnected. Guess we'll have to come tomorrow so he can get VC's head too."
Same here. Even when logically it would make little sense to have 10,000 legendary bounty hunters, the players invariably can wrap their mind around that concept just fine anyway.
And, in the end, is it that illogical? How good do you have to be, to be a heroic version of whatever you're doing. One in a million? Being one in a million sounds pretty special to me. Well, a planet like Earth has some 6000 people who are one-in-a-million, and a planet like Coruscant could have 100,000 by itself, or more than enough for any server's population by itself. And there's a whole galaxy out there in Star Wars. There are probably trillions of trillions of sentient humanoids across the galaxy, and taking the best-of-the best, the one-in-a-million people would still mean more players than WoW has total or even than the Earth's total population.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Exactly! I just wanted to post this very message.
;)
We could test different strategies attacking the first and second Death star - of course in both cases in the movies the rebels were just extremely lucky and in a real simulation the coordinators of the imperial forces will not be as "over-confident". Still it would be interesting to have the rebels figure out what kind of weaknesses could be exploited. There are definitely strategic design flaws at least in the first Death star and the imperial battle plan.
The films give us many scenarios to replay, such as the imperial attack on Hoth with the AT-ATs, maybe even mix in a little infantry action... Though I'm not sure if I wanted to play an Ewok in the Battle of Endor.
There is such a host of details in the movies that the game could use - this is what so many Star Wars fans are longing for! Not the ability to play Wookie's third removed step-brother's cousin..
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
That was the thing that made SWG(original) the best MMO made IMHO.
The crafting system was just amazing. Everything you used, was made by someone else. The way they did loot was a great idea as well, EPIC's were actually rare. Maybe one or two per big guild. Legendarys were just that, Legendary. These items were WAY better than anything that could be made, but they were extremely rare. I remember PVPing and when the opposing guy pulled out his Legendary T-21, and it was game over. Your normal loot (tapes), was items that you placed into player crafted items to make them much better. But again, required PLAYER made items.
Everything was about what players could make. People played that game just to craft, and had a lot of fun doing it. You had to choose between crafting and fighting (most of us had crafter alts). The BEST part about it, was better crafters with better resources created better items. A cheaply thrown together weapon, would have less than half the power of a top quality player made. People became famous for what they could produce. I still remember Chik's armor, and Fengo's buff packs on Bloodfin. That was years ago.
The other aspect that really helped this, was decay. Everything would eventually break. So that guy with the Legendary rifle, can't just run around using it all day long. He had to pick and choose when to pull it out, because each time he did it lost a little "life"
The economy drove content. Doctors would pay multiple groups of 10+ people to go hunt some meat for them. Being a doctor/crafter, they couldn't go kill things themselves. So they hire hunters to grab some. Instead of getting said meat for an NPC, and then it just dissapears, it would find its way into the economy.
What language can I write my user-interface mods in? How much of the UI can I re-write using that language? ...
That first one is really the show-stopper for most games.
You and the 3 other people who care more about what language they write UI mods in than actually playing the game.
If you ever played WoW, you would know that its customer base is rather... well... yucky.
WoW is the 12yr olds paradise who need desperatly an E-penis. Of course there are exceptions but WoW attracts its customers because it is an extremely simple game to grind rather then master or enjoy.
Don't get me wrong. You CAN master and/or enjoy WoW, but that is not what the majority of its 10 million subscribers do. They grind. They are not intrested in story, character development, immersion. They want to grind XP, get fat loot and show of their "rares".
Age of Conan had a LOT of problems but one "new" thing it did was introduce dialog trees in its quests. Not that advanced but leading to the following complaint from a player who went back to WoW:
"Why can't the dialog trees default the best options to 1 or provide a popup to confirm if you are making an important choice because I just press 1 to skip through all of them as I want to get on with the quest without reading".
If I was a little bit lazy I would find the original post. AoC at some points gave you the choice of your quest reward be in the dialog. If I remember correctly, it was the epic quest chain.
So the developers introduced a story, a background and the WoW player base just wanted to get it over with to grind loot.
AoC also had other problems, it had no loot, no armour. The game was supposed to be skill based, not based on what loot you had on you. The forums were filled with endless complaints that the armour from lvl 10 wasn't that different from lvl 40. IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE! This way, a hardcore player and a casual player would have similar stats, very important in a PvP game that doesn't want to cater only to the most hardcore grinders.
Further problem, items weren't bind on equip, meaning you could pass them on easily once you no longer had a use for them. This meant there were no rare items to begin with, nothing special about them if there were rare and in plenty supply for low low prices. Again, no end of complaints despite the fact that this was how the game was designed. on purpose.
The complaints of course all were from the people who wanted AoC to be WoW. AoC had lots of problems but not being WoW was not one of them.
Going deliberatly after the WoW market means you HAVE TO be WoW. And not the WoW some ppl play, but the WoW 10 million people play. That is a very risky market to enter. First, Blizzard has shown they are the best at making WoW and nobody else has even come close. In fact everyone else has had to make a living by NOT being WoW and attracting customers who do NOT WANT WOW! If you introduce the perfect WoW clone, then why would people come to you? They already invested lots of money and time in WoW, so why would they switch?
if you change the smallest bit, the WoW fans will complain till you change things, but they will go back to WoW anyway and you will loose all those who hated WoW and wanted something different. If only there was an example of an MMORPG that attracted people who didn't like WoW style but the game went ahead and changed to attract WoW players, failed to attract them but repulsed its old players. Anyone? Maybe some Sci-Fi movie based MMORPG. *cough*SWG NGE*cough*
AoC showed on thing, the MMORPG market is huge. You can attract a MILLION customers at launch. You do NOT have to be a WoW clone but you have to very clear about WHAT you game is going to be like from the start (DEMO) and have it WORK.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Star Wars used to be cool, but after the episode I,II and III flop (except the last 20 mins of III) most of us have given up.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
KOTOR sold 2-3x more copies on the Xbox than the PC. Now they're abandoning the console in favor of the WAY oversaturated PC-only MMO market?!? wtf? Very dumb move. They've abandoned a guaranteed cash-cow for another Star Wars Galaxies flop.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.