Star Wars Old Republic: Wrong Developer

There were only two reasons to see Star Wars. Incredible fights and the battle of good vs evil. In the 4, 5, 6 the fights were not as spectacular, but the emotional stress and scenes were really well done.

Watching BioWare try to provide a MMORPG is comical to me. The Jedi movements are not smooth, extremely jerky and overall animation is subpar for a MMORPG.

So unless BioWare can do what Asian MMORPG have done, provide insane and incredible character skills that keeps players wanting for more, for that next level, the next skill... They will have to do what Blizzard has done, provide intense and incredible boss hunting, PvE and flawless balance among classes. Games that solely depend on PvP without incredible action fail. Look at Warhammer and AoC for reference. Games with subpar action like WoW and LOTRO and Ever Quest have done well because of the PvE element.
- And from what I've seen so far, Star Wars is looking to be the fail. PvP with lackluster skills and poor action.

IMO for Bioware to succeed they needed to make Star Wars Unleashed but in MMORPG.

BioWare has clearly accepted that COMBAT for PVP MMO has to be flashy, exciting. But the BioWare combat/action looks terrible.
- Also BioWare claims to be heroic it should be about single person going against odds
- BioWare, seems to have been smashed on the head and someone forgot to tell them this is called Massive Multiplayer...

Watch this, it looks horrible: http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/video-documentary-4

Classes and Balance makes no sense to me! It's not Star Wars!
People watch Star Wars because they watch Jedi vs Sith. Making the classes even so a trooper or a bounty hunter is on par with a Jedi defeats the whole point of Star Wars. Jedi is supposed to be the ultimate warrior, with only a Sith as competition.

Eh, game just overall looks stupid to me. I don't get how someone using force, who can deflect bullets and whatever be fun when other classes are balanced to be on same level. That to me is not Star Wars.

 

Hey lets wait til the games even remotely finished til judgements are pressed? Yes? Good.

 

You are right. But there is a bit of excitement and anticipation. But for me, looking at the combat for Star Wars, it just makes me feel incredibly dissapointed. Bioware to me has destroyed Star Wars in this game.

Star Wars Force Unleashed had the idea. Now if that was made into a MMORPG, that would be exhilerating. Hundreds of Jedi vs Sith with incredible movements and force combat. But playing a Jedi and losing to an agent? That's going to kill the experience of Star Wars for me. Especially losing to trooper, yeah...

I was curious to see if there were other MMORPG and Star Wars who are also dissapointed with what they have seen so far. Action/Combat really terrible and class balancing making you scratch your head, this isn't Star Wars...

 

I seriously hope this does not happen. I don't think Star Wars characters need to look like emo adrogynous flying elves.


But yeah, I see where the OP is going with this and I have to agree based on all the pre-release screens and info on the mmo. Since it's BioWare at the helm the player better get ready for a lot of reading and text-tree options. While BioWare have a pretty good track record for game quality I am following their venture into mmo territory with trepidation. And so far the game as whole seems to be lacking certain Star Wars characteristics which is essentially large-scale space battles and epic space travel. We shall see what happens at time of release.

 

That wasn't what I was referring to. Watch some Guild Wars 2 combat videos, or some of the Tera Online or others. Disregard they are fantasy characters and notice how smooth, how epic and incredible they are. Even just swinging a sword, the lighting effects of a warrior charging and shield bashing etc.

Jedi should have incredible chain swings. Acrobatic leaps that are VERY smooth, and elegant. The force skills should have plenty of effects to go along with it, debris, lighting, etc. And they should also be incredible, like when you use it, you say, wow, that was awesome, let me do that again.
- But watch the developer videos, combat is the exact opposite. It's jerky hack and slash, and the force skills make you think, is this Star Wars or a spoof?

That's what I was referring to. Star Wars is about watching awe inspiring action and I think the game should reflect that. But what I've seen from BioWare looks like hack and slash embarrassment of what I would have expected in MMO's 15 years ago...

Watch this:

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See that makes you feel powerful. Not a jerky hack slash wimp.

This is what Force should be more like:

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Generalising much? mmmkay. I loved Star Wars for many other reasons. Great humor, mythology, interesting characters, cool Aliens and spaceships. There was lots of things to love about it, besides those you mention.

You think the game is comical because, you think the Animations in the game, from the videos released so far, is "subpar"?
I too think Animations are very important, but you can't judge an entire game only on that.

I haven't played a MMORPG yet, that seems to boost "Incredible Action". We're still in the realm of auto-attack make-me-a-sammy combat.
I also disagree completely.

WTH would Bioware need to either do a Asian MMORPG or what Blizzard has done with WoW?
Your comparisons to Warhammer and AoC are horrible, as those games failed for completely different reasons than you're suggesting.

SWTOR looks like it will have a strong PvE component. In fact they haven't talked much about the PvP yet. The quests in SWTOR should be among the best in the genre, in storytelling, depth, breathe and choice.

1) Force Unleashed was a bad game. The only good thing about it was the story. Using that as a framework to build a MMORPG, is beyond dumb.

2) Getting Real Time Action in a MMORPG form, is very hard as Lag becomes a big issue. I do not think that any MMORPG server system would be able to handle hundreds of players using force powers, running on Euphoria at the same time. It's completely unrealistic.

3) Peoples computers would not be able to run such a game. It would lag to bad. Think at how scaled back WoW is. That's the only reason why everything doesn't crash with so many players in the same vicinity. real-time Physics simulation alone would be the end of it.

I applaud them for something new with the genre. I think it's healthy to spice things up with a Single player component. I loved the hybrid thought of it in Demon's Soul.

I agree with you about the action not looking very good at this point though, and I am not sure either if it's a good idea to have the player killing 2-3 enemies right from the beginning.

Not completely true.
The Jedis we followed in the film like Obi-Wan, Luke, Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn. These where all legendary Jedi and some of the strongest the order had ever seen.
The average Jedi would get whacked by blasters fired by stupid droids(as seen in Episode 2). The ones that the players are playing are not these near immortal Jedis.
They are regular jedis, and people playing Troopers and Bounty Hunters are legendary soldiers, fighters and mercenaries like Han Solo and Boba Fett, who also could hold their own!

Also, you should not allow yourself to get bend out of shape of lore. Logics in games won't make sense, ever. Before you start accepting this, and just acknowledge that its a game, and not everything can make sense, the sooner you will be able let go of your sense of disbelief, and just like it.

Well, it's sad then that Star Wars is not more to you than that.







Personally I think SWTOR looks interesting, but right now I am more looking forward to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Guild Wars 2, Tera and my own little guilty pleasure, Blade and Soul... YouTube - Blade & Soul HD

 

Yes I already know about all those MMOs. Tera Online beta should start end of this year for US and Blade and Soul not holding my breath for, probably 2 years IMO.

I may go with GW2 or Cataclysm, probably GW2 just because I don't want to get into WoW again.

 

Well, I wouldn't say the combat is not smooth, it is just they haven't added the 'draw the lines of air' that Guild of Wars has (those are the videos you showed, am I right?).

On the other hand graphically it's either too cartoon-ish or still heavily underdeveloped.

 

Lets also not forget that the whole star war's universe is more then just "jedi v sith" Sure that one of the main issues in the movies but get into the books or the comics and it is far from what its all about. The whole rogue squadron series, the republic commando stuff. Im sorry you cant see past the Jedi stuff but star wars is alot more then "the force". And luffy has it right that the Jedi we follow in the series are the elite of the elites. Look at the end of Episode 2 the coliseum scene where Jedi are being slaughtered by droids. And what does it take to save them? Your basic clone troopers.

And ing and moaning about a game that is nearly a year away is really crazy. I highly doubt animations you see now will really represent what the game turns out to be. Look at what WoW was like in the pre 1.0 beta patches and what it is today, totally different beast. Good MMO's are living growing things. Stagnation of development means doom to any MMO.

 

or they could ditch this piece and get on with kotor3.

 

I honestly would prefer that, I think they probably still could do it too.

 

Me too... the world doesn't need another SW: everyone's a sith.
(it doesn't matter how its balanced... why would anyone want to be anything but a sith lord?)

 

Yes Bioware would just throw away 5 years of development and 100 million dollars.

 

Dont forget you need lots of clone troopers!

Would prefer if the Clone Troopers in ST:TOR was similar to the ones you play in Star Wars: Republic Commando (Awesome game btw).
At least they would stand a chance against angry Sith Lords. xD
(And i know that the "clone troopers" from that game is not in the same timeline as The Old Republic.)

 

"The writers were more than happy to help us out here–story-wise, you’re not playing just any Trooper, but rather a rising star of the Republic Special Forces unit known as Havoc Squad. The fact that the Trooper was not a faceless red-shirt, but rather the crème de la crème of the Republic Army, gave us a lot of leeway to create a compelling and visceral fantasy for the Player to experience."

http://www.swtor.com/news/blog/20090605_002

From BioWare's blog on Troopers.

 

As much as I love Bioware... they might have done that already.
We are talking about saving the project by making something that doesn't suck out of a disaster-in-the-making.

I am sorry, but who wants to play even an elite trooper when the sith lord gets lightning, force choke, force disarm, and a lightsaber which deflects laser blasts?

Even if they balance a trooper to be EQUAL to a sith lord... why in billy blue blazes would you play one?

 

They should've continued the KotoR series.

 

How can you even say BioWare is making a failure of a game when we still don't know anything about end game pvp and pve, plus everything like crafting and possible space exploration/fighting. Even if bioware failed horribly at the mmo aspect (which would be probably impossible since they have multiple LucasArts people on the team that have worked on SWG for years, and they have the entire Warhammer Mythic team who is also owned by EA for any help.) they still have 8 classes that have at least 150 hours of content each.

I hate people who say this game is bad or is going to fail when they have zero evidence to back up any of the crap they are saying. Everything they say is an opinion and like so should stay in their god damn head until what they are actually talking about is considered final in the game. Just like the first poster who just says absolute junk with ZERO first-hand experience other then a lousy glimpse of combat in the freaking ALPHA phase. This game is changing every day, and you cant get a real idea of things until all the big announcements at this E3.

Also not everyone wants to play a sith lord. All the polls show that the sith warrior is not even the most preferred class. More people will be playing bounty hunters on average then sith warriors based on what we are seeing right now.

 

But to be realistic though, from all the Bioware games I have played - Single Player RPGs, I have to say that I think that Balancing has always been one of their weakest areas.

An Area which Warcraft/Starcraft and Guild Wars series have been very good in.

Having such a large and time consuming focus on the PvE, could give someone the notion that Bioware are perhaps underrestimating the importance of balance. They have these incredible quests, companion characters and all this story stuff, but PvP is a different beast. One that perhaps no game developer have truly been able to get right.

Some people sometimes whisper of early UO, DAOC and Planetside in their primes, but these games are mostly forgotten now, and obviously people did not stick around the same way they would and still stick around for the competitive aspects of games like Starcraft and Counter-Strike!

The end-game PvP model is almost Utopia.
In WoW it's uneven due to the game being a PvE game, with PvP enabled later - And I think SWTOR will struggle more with getting it right than Blizzard has done thus for.
After all Blizzard had online competitive multiplayer experience from before WoW, and the gods must know they tried hard with Battlegrounds, Honor system and Arena Systems. Lots of failures along the way, also.

Guild Wars was almost the opposite. Way to complicated for normal people, it became the hardcore mathmatics game, but was controlled by the numbers and no uber loot, which allowed for great balance, but an incredible high learning curve where many people never got around to experience the fun of the great PvP in the game.
GW was so dependant on a good team, that it begged for in-game voice integration at it's launch, and a community who got accustomed to use it from day 1. By years later when they finally integrated it, it was a bit to late to make a real difference.

Often the playerbase have a hard time adopting to new things along the road, if they are a radical departure from what they know. We truly are creatures of habit... Even online. Often but not always. The Dungeon Finder in WoW, has been one of the best things I have ever seen in a MMORPG.

It's the thing right now that solidates WoW as the king of the online space. If playing a Healer or a Tank, the dungeon finder(a cross server instanced looking-for-dungeon tool) you will get in a group within seconds, and long wait times for a group is a thing of the past.
The Dungeon Finder actually threatens real world questing now as people swear by it. Cataclysm better deliver on some great quests!

 

lets not forget that PvP "balancing" has killed alot of classes and brought back to life others in wow. In both pve and pvp. Over the course of this expansion many classes have got from OP to worthless, to just okay. All because the arena system is flawed to favor small groups. In fact alot of WoW devs have self admitted the worst thing they did to wow was introduce arena's. Which is why in cataclysm you'll see more rewards for world pvp and battlegrounds then arenas.

As a mostly PvE Paladin i spend the entire expansion getting kicked in the balls because of PvP "fixes"

 

There are some games that can get away with just being PvP.

But to do that, you gotta keep the skills used in PvP interesting and Bioware just isn't getting it right. Also I think Bioware's fundamental philosophy of MMO PvP is drastically wrong. The developer's think PvP heroics is individuals fighting against all odds. In MMO I disagree, if that was the case people would just play single player RPG. Play MMORPG for the big battles where team work is essential.

One of the problems I see, how do Jedi, Bounty Hunters, or Agents work together? I don't see the cohesion like you do with WoW, Mage using crowd control, Paladin/Warrior tanking, with a priest helping with survivability, heals etc. I just don't see it. It's like a game where everyone wants to be the hero, but with anything that requires teamwork that's fail.

It would have been better if it was simple, Faction vs Faction, Jedi vs Sith. And with each faction have different classes with different specialization. Like one with emphasis on force, others with melee (sabres) and somehow create a healing class. At least that's how I would have done it.

The ships, the bounty hunters, agents etc would just be NPC and you can create scenarios where they have an effect in gameplay.

 

Did you read your post?
Pure fanboi nerd rage over other people's well-founded concern.
I rather like Bioware... but I think this departure is a waste of money on a concept that sucked last time someone tried it.

People are giving input from many MMORPGs and in case you didn't know a star wars one has been done before.

Oddly enough YOUR post is the least founded... you are basing it in "maybe" and "what if" where the others here are basing theirs in experience and "what happened last time".

Regardless of how good Bioware is... I have no interest in this project.
I own every single KotoR for PC and would buy a new installment.