It’s in Jenner’s post earlier in the thread, “Endless fights with groups of 3 dudes standing around doing nothing.” Just like every MMO where you get to a camp of enemies and they are standing around in groups of 3 or 4 just far enough apart that you can fight them one group at a time.
You don’t have to sell me, Jason, I’m psyched about it. I just don’t think it’s going to convert anyone who has given up on every other MMO inside a month. I didn’t have much more fun in the SWTOR 20s than I did, for example, in WoW, and I loved leveling in WoW so that’s a good thing (for me).
I was more just saying the 20s weren’t a slog, which would be one interpretation of what you wrote. Guys standing around, well, that’s suspension-of-disbelief stuff for me. What’s with all the guys standing around in CRPGs? They have the luxury of encounter designs that can permit longer LOS agro, but they’re still basically packs of guys loitering in pleasantly-defeatable sizes. They fight to the death rather than go run to team up with the 400 other Hurlocks and Genlocks in that dungeon who you’ll kill 7-8 at a time over the next 30 minutes.
It’s a slog if you don’t <3 MMOs.
My sense is that the faux-CRPG sensation created by the conversations and cutscenes - I repeatedly had little “shit I should save the game here” moments - made the bear-ass-collection / killquests feel more like the dungeon-crawl interstitial killfests that separate the story dole-outs in a Bioware game. In WoW the mechanics of the killing, the gear, and the level progression were almost the sum of what there was to enjoy.
And yeah, I did like questing in WoW, particularly the sense of doing it “correctly” and efficiently, so I’m undoubtedly not grind-averse. But in SWTOR the story never left front-of-mind: I was often surprised when I gained a level, and I never thought about gear except when I was figuring out what rewards to take. In WoW the fun was entirely visual, mechanical, and reflected in xp/h.
This stuff is subjective and I don’t mean to “debate” what you’re saying, people’ll have to form their own judgements. For me though, it was substantially more fun than WoW questing.
Because this is not fun. Gameplay trumps realism when the two collide.
It brings back memories of when i played FFXI and someone came running by while i was sitting around. A second later they yell “TRAIN!!!” and everyone around starts running for the zone line because an enemy ran to get help and then brought EVERYTHING in the zone to help it get revenge. Some people made it out alive. Some people…
And yes, to me the questing in swtor is significantly better than wow’s. In wow questing was always a means to an end. I wanted to get max level asap both so i could keep up with my friends in order to do sub max instances and so i could do max level instance with them later on. To this end i would do only the quests that i thought would level me the fastest. If a quest was too much trouble and/or didn’t lead to anything, i skipped it. Like most people i certainly never took the time to read the quests, trusting entirely to my objective tracker to tell me where to go. Swtor puts more effort in to making the journey important, instead of just the destination. I care about the story here and enjoy doing new evil things (mmm bounty hunter quests).
Because this is not fun. Gameplay trumps realism when the two collide.
Which is basically what I was getting at. CRPGs (and, for that matter, an absolute majority of video games with ostensibly “player-comparable enemies”) structure the encounters such that your protagonist kills thousands, or tens of thousands of theoretically significant (often in RPGs “similar level”) opponents in the course of the game.
Pockets of guys in MMOs not reacting to the slaughter 40 yards away are indeed silly, but they’re on a spectrum of silly with CRPGs who just have the luxury of hiding it better.
Ryslin
3767
This stopped not because of the unfun factor but more because of the deliberate asshat behavior that it can encourage. Many more people play these games, and since there is no effective means of shunning the various griefers of the world we must resort to creating games where it is less likely for them to do direct harm. Setting leash locations is an extension of that logic.
I do miss say Terminus in Stormwind as it never annoyed me to the point of screaming, but I do remember a time when they literally were bringing him in town with every respawn.
That said , you can gather in swtor… just the mobs lock to the individual and have a moment of “get out of here” time when they return to their location.
Well, Jenner, that settles it. You have to buy SWTOR now and report back to us in January. If I’m right, Jason owes me a crafted epic and if I’m wrong I’ll let him make me a crafted epic.
Although actually I guess the crafted Biochem epics are BoP? Which is probably a pretty good argument for Biochemistry, Bioanalysis, Slicing. Some of the ingredients for Biochem apparently come from diplomacy but since they’re not BoP slicing seems like the better choice.
Jenner
3772
I finally fell off the fence (on the side of “I’ma keepin’ mah money!”) :) It’ll have to be up to others here to report back!
Hetzer
3773
I preordered yesterday… Hopefully the imperial agents rule!
Diplomacy is going to get you broke really fast, unlike slicing which apparently makes you rich.
On the other hand, with diplomacy, you can start ‘romancing’ your companion by the time you are level 20.
On the other hand, with slicing, you can buy the “Bribe-a-companion” items from vendors.
On the other hand, with diplomacy you can also get Bio Supplies used for crafting.
Its tricky.
Slicing wasn’t too shabby in my experience. Slicing + Bioanalysis + Scavenging, with the bioanalysis and scavenging stuff put up for sale on the AH, would probably have you comfortably into the hundreds of thousands of credits by 25. (I had ~90-100k at 25 just slicing, scavenging, and vendoring the scavenged materials.)
But the reusable stims and medpacks require biochemistry. (Reusable grenades - lol - require cybertech) That strikes me as being worth a bit of lost income.
Marcus
3776
I can’t wait to start playing my Bounty Hunter. I had so much fun with that class in beta. They are just so fucking evil!
I played a rebel trooper a bit and they’re fun. I just like light sabres more, I guess
Marcus
3778
Fuck light sabers more like ROCKETS TO THE FUCKING FACE!
Oh finally, a game with rockets.
I’d retort with the Boba Fett/Ewoks intro from Robot Chicken Star Wars II, but Adult Swim is pretty good at keeping that stuff off tube sites.
