109 réponses à ce sujet

[Volus Warlord]

simfamSP wrote...

Partly because I've never played TOR

*closes thread*

[TheBlackBaron]

Lack of gay romance and people wanting to make TORtanic jokes, if I recall forum complaints correctly.

[ObserverStatus]

TheBlackBaron wrote...

Lack of gay romance and people wanting to make TORtanic jokes, if I recall forum complaints correctly.

It has gay romance options in one of the more recent patches, but they got in trouble for that because all the gay LIs are on the same planet and Fox News accused Bioware of promoting segregation.

[Maverick827]

The only legitimate complaints early on were performance issues during large scale PvP. Everything else was your typical gamer whining.

[Cutlass Jack]

Why waste time watching Lets Plays? You can play for free and should. I've been playing the game since launch and still find new things I haven't seen before.

See if you can find a friend to Duo the game with you. That's where the real magic happens in my opinion. Sharing a Bioware style game's dialogue with a friend is alot more fun than you might think. And you both still get to enjoy your companion characters and hear their dialogue too.

[Nerdage]

Personally, the main thing that's wrong with it is that my guild died and I don't know anyone else who plays...

Honestly though, I have two problems with it; the romances thing, and that I can't use cartel coins to buy the mini-expansion as a subscriber. Besides those, it's my favourite MMO that I've played (I'm a PvEer, couldn't speak to the PvP), and I'd echo Cutlass' advice to just give it a go for free.

[Sajuro]

bobobo878 wrote...

TheBlackBaron wrote...

Lack of gay romance and people wanting to make TORtanic jokes, if I recall forum complaints correctly.

It has gay romance options in one of the more recent patches, but they got in trouble for that because all the gay LIs are on the same planet and Fox News accused Bioware of promoting segregation.

Wait, fox news is mad because a game has all of its gay characters on one planet away from everyone else?
what strange universe do you come from?

[FeralEwok]

Played the game during launch and continued for about 5-6 months after.

The only class I ever managed to complete was Smuggler. The other's just never kept me motivated enough to play the story.

I had a friend play with me since early access and for the first 25-30 levels we had a blast. The game starts off strong. I thought things would really take off once you get your ship, but honestly that turning point is where it goes downhill.

The maps get progressively larger, but emptier too. This made travelling very tedious since the swoop bikes traveled about the same speed as a riding mower. Both my friend and I have actually fallen asleep at the wheel on Hoth. I kid you not.

But annoying maps aside, what really drove us away was the lackluster stories and characters. Some of them were great. I loved two of the Jedi Knight's companions T7 and Kira and the Bounty Hunter's companion Blizz. But that was it. Everyone else was completely forgettable and lacked any sort of depth.

The game was trying to bring in that fourth pillar of story, but the stories be it class, planet, or sidequest always fell short due to poor acting, poor production quality, and just general lack of enthusiasm. It had its moments but it wasn't enough for me to keep playing.

Modifié par FeralEwok, 25 mars 2013 - 03:37 .

[DeathScepter]

other than Revan and Jedi Exile being in TOR, i have no problem with TOR.

[Serillen]

There isn't really anything wrong with it as an mmo. The most glaringly obvious issue with it for me was refinement particularly in the UI and how it could take you going through 2-3 separate zone transfers just to get from the central space station to whatever planet you were going to. I know they fixed a lot of that but I had my fun and moved on by that point.

As for the story lines, some of them I thought were really good while others were particularly bad. I really enjoyed the Inquisitor and Agent story lines and totally hated the Consular one as well as the Republic Taris story line. All in all the story is the only thing that really sets the game apart from other similar MMO's and that's generally why it gets a lot of hate, and because it expands on the stories of Kotor 1 & 2 in a way some people don't approve.

[Maverick827]

FeralEwok wrote...

But annoying maps aside, what really drove us away was the lackluster stories and characters. Some of them were great. I loved two of the Jedi Knight's companions T7 and Kira and the Bounty Hunter's companion Blizz. But that was it. Everyone else was completely forgettable and lacked any sort of depth.

I couldn't disagree more. The only companion I didn't like was Khem Val, and that's mostly because I was playing a light side Inquisitor. If I didn't dump him so early, perhaps I would have come to like him more.

I really hate comments like "completely forgettable and lacked depth," because those are such meaningless phrases. They quantify and express nothing specific. All they really are is a way of saying "I didn't like them" using gussied-up rhetoric to hide the fact that you're merely stating an opinion. I suppose people get it from movie reviewers; they feel like their words seem more unbiased if they speak like that.

[Roflbox]

TheBlackBaron wrote...

Lack of gay romance and people wanting to make TORtanic jokes, if I recall forum complaints correctly.

TOR has a gay planet. Segregation ftw.

[FeralEwok]

Maverick827 wrote...

I really hate comments like "completely forgettable and lacked depth," because those are such meaningless phrases. They quantify and express nothing specific. All they really are is a way of saying "I didn't like them" using gussied-up rhetoric to hide the fact that you're merely stating an opinion. I suppose people get it from movie reviewers; they feel like their words seem more unbiased if they speak like that.

Completely forgettable is meaningless?

If I say completely forgettable it means just that...I cannot remember anything about them.

I cannot remember anything about them because they lacked detail in character...or depth. They were boring which is of course an opinion. No one is trying to hide anything. Sorry if using more colorful language other than " I didn't like them" bothers you so much.

Me no like TOR

TOR characters dumb

Modifié par FeralEwok, 25 mars 2013 - 04:58 .

[Battlebloodmage]

I admit, I didn't try it because it didn't have gay romance but had straight romance. I would have tried it if it didn't have any romance at all. It feels like I'm getting less contents for paying the same price as anyone else. Anyway, from the look of the game itself, it reminds me a lot of WoW, and I don't need to pay 2 subs each month for basically the same game.

[Daerog]

I thought it was fine. Played for a while when it launched, but stopped when friends stopped playing and will probably never get back to it. Favorite classes were the smuggler and inquisitor.

[Lux]

TOR is actively blocked by EA in certain world regions like China. That didn't keep me from playing but it was rather annoying having to jump through hoops.

I had lots of fun with the storyline and characters. Everything else seemed more of the same. I remember doing a solo mission in a crashed ship. I fought my way through densely packed enemies, picked up what I came for... and then had to fight my way out through the same respawned enemies again. That was pretty tedious. I also skipped a lot of dialogue when there was an alien speaking in his/her tongue, which was pretty much annoying gibberish.

I eventually got tired of being blocked from the game (as well as the website), and having to use a VPN like a gold seller. But besides that, there was nothing there that could really hook me with what is, IMO, a standard MMO with tedious gameplay. I would've preferred KOTOR 3 to this.

And there's many other MMOs out there. The only MMO I play these days is Guild Wars 2. I have no such problems in connectivity and they smartly tackle bots and gold sellers while allowing entrance to legitimate players. It's a more gorgeous game to look at too.

[eroeru]

They have awful payment models and nowadays unbalanced FtP which affects PvP and other aspects of the game (population for one) really negatively.

You have guys competing who don't have basic required gear at end-game PvP, and have LESS QUICKBARS for christ sake. They cannot use their own nor event-centered abilities. PvP is more poor from this, even and most notably in end-game.

At least that's one of the last pieces of info I did get about the game. Other negatives are those of typical MMOs - boring areas, repetitive quests and such. Oh, and they really insulted the previous fan with atrocious writing including Revan and Exile.

[LTD]

* Quality and quantity of Voice Acting is pretty mind blowing.  Storylines have some talented writing poured in them.  Instead of coming up with healthy environment for 100 mil dollar voice actors, they have esserntially settled with having the VAs read WoW questlogss outloud. Writers have been completely chained by design-side determination to create a 1:1 WoW-clone in terms of flow and progreression. In practise this means gigantic amount of fairly isolated,  small,brief, short, stupid quests and characters you meet only in passing. As a result, most of the 100 million dollar voice acting gets burned in utterly useless büllshït. Nobody cares wether or not a perfectly ordinary MMO quest log is read out loud or not. Hardly any of the dialogue is dedicated to character or world building. Everything is always about road signs." Thank god you made it here Jedi, now go there - > " Such waste.  The main story lines do have their strong points. They too are pretty much crippled by the frustrating quest design. Every single genuinely interesting part of the story is buried by dozen " in order to open this door, you must bring me three droid arses" meta-steps.  Imagine opening dialogue  of Pulp Fiction with 40 commercial breaks crammed in to interrupt first 10 mins of play. That is TOR story for you. Check out The Secret World for examples on how to bring GOOD writing and character development in an MMO.  Ultimately Thse Secret World makes game of similar mold; you have ton of quests. Quest hubs. NPCs giving these quests. However, actual dialogue in TSW is all about setting the mood and developing them characters. It is much more creative approach. TOR settles with spending 100 mils on " Hello Jedi, go north. Droid arses to gather."  They've burned a Nasa spacemission's worth of cash on BS like that.


* Game is static and lifeless. World design is mostly boring and uninspired. NPCs never do anything exiting, just sit there waiting for player to come talk/kill them. Mechanics of everything beyond dat sweet dialogue wheel are utterly primitive. Questing, adventuring, doing stuff it all plays like 2005 era WoW. Ever since it's 1st expansion, WoW has had more sophisticated and exiting quest design and related mechanics.  Unsure if this blandness in TOR  is caused by poor engine or utterly uncreative approach to questing experience as a whole.

* UI was terrible at launch. Has gotten little less irrational over the months I hear. Lack of moddability ensures it is vastly inferior to most of it's competitors.

* Game was a disastrous flop. 200 mil++ budget. Yet, mere 6 months after release it was already struggling to stay profitable. This was fixed by bringing in a good number of increasingly annoying cash shop services. Make no mistake, FreetoPlay isn't a very sincere effort to bring new players aboard. It is there mostly to give cash shop an excuse to exist. Profits of TOR come from milking the already  existing loyal 200-300k of subscribers out of money by selling them lottery tickets ( < - i sh!t you not) and vanity gear.  Increasing amount of new items, new game features, new everything come with additional price tag to subscribers.

* Combat on some of the  melee charac ters is quite fun and feels genuinely superior to, say, WoW. Ranged people play and feel like your typical MMO classes in every other game.

* Instances, end game, what you actually end up doing when not spinning dat dialogue wheel is literally a 1:1 copy of what WoW used to be around release of Wrath of the Lick King. Questing and instances being not as sophisticated being the only major differnse

* Even for amusement park subgenre of  MMOs, everything is highly isolated and restricted. Strangely even World of Warcraft feels like an open world sandbox when compared to TOR.  Emergent gameplay is a rare thing here. Poor game engine can't support things like large scale battles between players.

* I find it utterly ridiculous how much value people give to romances in Bioware RPGs. I swear, eventually somebody with a dev studio behind him/her figures you guys out and makes a AA(A) quality softcore porn RPG with day time soap elements for you lot. Mayhaps DA:I makes that game already I know not;p

Modifié par LTD, 25 mars 2013 - 09:41 .

[Maverick827]

"Game was a disastrous flop." Take this poster's comments with a plate of salt, as you typically would when dealing with the aggrandizing rhetoric of the standard BSN rabble.

[TheJediSaint]

Maverick827 wrote...

"Game was a disastrous flop." Take this poster's comments with a plate of salt, as you typically would when dealing with the aggrandizing rhetoric of the standard BSN rabble.

Everything's a disasterous flop if you set your bar high enough.   The fact is TOR was a success in terms of profit, and it's change to FTP as boosted it's player population from its low during the summer.    

TOR didn't succeed in knocking WOW off its throne, but I think that's an unfair measure for the success of an MMO.

Modifié par TheJediSaint, 25 mars 2013 - 02:09 .

[Giltspur]

I played a lot of WoW, consider Bioware my favorite developer and really like Star Wars.

Despite those things, TOR didn't really hold my interest.

My experiences as a gamer was that it didn't really improve on WoW.  What are issues with WoW?  Healers staring at life bars.  Tanking being dispoprtionately stressful compared to DPS.  Roles limited into certain specs.  Feeling like you have to take one for the team to be a tank or a healer.  The social complications of running multi-user content.  TOR didn't really address the issues with WoW.  It basically spread tanking and healing trees around to more classes.  But it didn't innovate MMO gameplay in any way.

When WoW came out it made fundamental improvements over Everquest.  The game started out with you doing things that felt significant.  Tagging enemies cut down on kill stealing.  Griefing was harder.  There was instanced content.  The death penalty wasn't as harsh.  The leveling curve wasn't as steep.  A greater percentage of leveling could be achieved via questing as opposed to grinding.  These were fundamental improvements to the genre.  Blizzard looked at Everquest and made a better game.

Stepping away from my experiences and engaging in some analysis, I think Bioware just did the wrong thing.  MMO's aren't about story.  They're about your character's abilities, his role and his gear.  Bioware seemed content to take a WoW clone, drop it in a well known IP like Star Wars and hope that their Bioware polish (voice over and story) would separate it from the pack.  But MMO's are vast and rely on gameplay.  If you make the game about lore and environment, people quit after they've seen every zone.  If you make the game about story, people quit when they finish the story. It has to be about the gameplay, the ability progression, your role in combat and your gear, your progression with or against others.  And TOR didn't do enough there.  I'm torn though.  I'm not sure what I wanted out of TOR.  I know I didn't want a WoW clone.  I didn't want the burnout that WoW can induce. That said, the things I probably liked the most about TOR were the ship and the addition of a crew.  And I had the most fun in the game while soloing. 

Modifié par Giltspur, 25 mars 2013 - 05:58 .

[LTD]

Maverick827 wrote...

"Game was a disastrous flop." Take this poster's comments with a plate of salt, as you typically would when dealing with the aggrandizing rhetoric of the standard BSN rabble.

" it's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste. "

200 million Dollars  is the most careful estimation on  the price tag EA had to face in order to pop SW:TOR out.   When you combine development costs, marketing and licensing to Lucas Arts, few analysts are saying  SW:TOR cost no less than half a billion dollars to make.

During first few months, the game sold little under 2 million units. Devs announced around 1 million stable subs  was their " green zone"; as long as TOR had more than that it would be a profitable venture for EA to keep it going in it's current scale.

It was never able to hold subscriber base anywhere  nearly as high as amount of units it initially sold; instead of subscribing, people would play the first free month and leave the game.  Some 6 months after it's release, significant portion of the dev  and support teams got the boot. In July 2012 it was announced game had under 1 million subs left. Towards autumn the sub base was, according to a current dev,  " under 1 million, over 500k" 

In November, some 11 months after it's release the most expensive video game ever made had to abandon Subscription-based model and went F2P.

I'm not sure if the Video Game incustry has publishers  besides EA and Activision who'd survive the release of SW:TOR. 

How badly does an MMO have to flop in order to be deserving of the term in your books? I'm assuming it takes mass suicides and public stonings of the devs? Brush your teeth more often and use menthols during the actual event..leaves room for less spicy food.

I would really love to hear how it is a success in terms of profit. We live in an era where rather  normal  AAA multiplatform releases have pressure to sell over 2 million units to become profitable. Imagine what the numbers look like to most expensive video game ever made. BW devs themself stated how 1 million subs is what they needed to have in order to keep the game profitable.

That is not to say iSW:TOR wasn't  profitable at this very moment; the micro transaction jungle, content patches for 10 dollars and massive decreases in sizes  of dev team  and customer support have served their purpose I bet. Game with 200-500 million price tag kinda needs to be very profitable to..you know, make all that money back.
Iniitial launch and initial model for running TOR was  a disaster. Things happening right now and actions taken since are about recovering from the said disaster.

You have most expensive video game ever made. It launches with sub - based model. In 6 months, game loses over half of it's players, has half of the live - dev team (including more or less all of the lead designers) fired and eventually goes free to play. Unsure how it is not possible to read the writing on the wall. It shouldn't be possible to..you know, debate about this;p Feel free to question my remarks about game's lacking quality. You have my blessing to like it every bit as much as you like=]  Alas, I fear it isn't really credible  to pop up with plate of salt waah waaah -  lines when it comes to wether or not it was a massive financial disaster during it's first year of existance.

Modifié par LTD, 25 mars 2013 - 05:35 .