SWTOR

[eldaec]

Some notes from the live panel at NYCC

- 15 dungeons at launch, with end-game hard modes. (because fuck lore)
- No LFD feature yet
- Visual change with morality path is in, but won't affect the look or actual ability of skills used.
- Release date moved up to 12/20/11

Wasn't 12/20 the only release date they have given?

It's now the release date for Europe as well.  It was originally going to launch in Europe two days later.

They are now calling it a 'global release date' but I think that's just to wind up Austrailians in particular, and anyone outside of Europe and North America. Since afaik you still don't get shit on 5 of 7 continents.

[Sheepherder]

And what can stand? It's all fail. Unless it has a Blizzard name on it.. in which case, even a stinking turd is win (not to say Blizzard necessarily makes stinking turds.. but they could if they wanted to).

That's the thing: they take something awful and make it good...  Then they take their own good stuff and make it awful, but we can't always be winners, right?

The TOA jokes have been thick on our guildline. On the other hand if TOA had been like Vashj'ir I think I might still be playing DAOC, I really enjoyed the zone a lot.

[Sheepherder]

Yeah, can't see why you wouldn't put it in, if they think travel in their world is so fucking great they can always make you travel to a specific wayfarer dude to get access to a particular dungeon type. Pretty sure that's how the original EQ implementation worked anyway.

I doubt that would be popular, since that's effectively what Blizzard's meeting stones were if I'm understanding you correctly.

The great thing about Blizzard's dungeon finder is that it costs you nothing except a few UI clicks to try and get into a group.  If you want to add a travel requirement, the time to do that if after you're grouped, because then you're not discouraging people from even trying.

[eldaec]

Well, sure but that is just rejecting EA's premise that pointless travel time in a non-sandbox/economic game is somehow a good thing.

I think most people here would agree that travel time is not a feature. But you can ldon style instances with or without it.

[Evildrider]

People are just looking at it from a WoW standpoint.  In WoW all the dungeons are off in buttfuck areas of the map.  In TOR all the Flashpoints and Operations launch from one place.  

So basically your fleet area is the equivalent of Stormwind except all the dungeons are right there.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

And no, there is no twist in BG2 like the one in KOTOR. Arguably in BG1, sure.

Yeah, maybe it was BG 1 where you keep having the visions and in the end it turns out you're a god, or the reincarnation of some dude, or something like that? Anyways I remember finding the resemblance striking when I played KOTOR, what with it being the same developers and everything.

Speaking of which, it's been a long time since I looked it up, but I'm pretty sure the lead for Planescape: Torment then went on to do KOTOR. For a different company, obviously, but the same guy. I distinctly remember being all enthused about KOTOR as a result. Then again, the Internet was young then, and full of lies, so perhaps I was merely misled.

Can I ask, perhaps, for an example of storytelling in an RPG that you don't consider "lazy"? What constitutes effort to you? And perhaps you could spell out for me exactly how the Nameless One isn't just as special a 'chosen one' sort of character as any of the others?

Well, to answer the last question first, the Nameless One is special because he's interesting, not because of the actions he must inevitably take. He has actual personal qualities (immortality + amnesia, etc.) which, regardless of where they come from (I don't remember offhand), are the spur to the events in the story. The typical special/chosen one character is selected by the plot, for the purpose of fulfilling the plot, and all the special qualities s/he possesses are tailor-made to that end -- which is of course super convenient for writers, especially computer game writers, because mostly they are probably coming up with the plot way before they worry about who the protagonist is going to be. Planescape: Torment is relatively unique in that the plot -- or at least, all the memorable parts of the plot that I remember -- actually emerges from qualities of the character, including past decisions of the character. The game is about the protagonist as a person, not about the protagonist as a means to a series of cut scenes.

Fallout is similar, in that while the Vault Dweller certainly becomes a sort of mythic figure, it's actually mostly just because she is someone who came out of a vault. Planescape: Torment is exceptional mostly because the qualities of the character make for such a fascinating story, and because the writers focus entirely on that process of self-discovery, and because the setup is such that you are simultaneously discovering who you were while you figure out who you are.

Compare this to KOTOR, which in theory could have had a similar tension, since it again features an amnesiac protagonist who did very remarkable things in the past. But instead of inviting you to discover those events and then pass your own judgement, implicitly, through how you choose to have your character reaction and how you assimilate that knowledge into your own actions, it's Star Wars so it's just like 'omg you used to be evil but now you might not be evil?!?!?! OR WILL YOU BE?' I never thought I'd say this, but the D&D alignment system actually provided a superior, subtler moral framework on which to hang complex characterization. The Nameless One's premise also helps, since there isn't a single past you, but several -- and even better, it takes most of the game for them to resolve into clearly distinct personalities.

Anyways, I can surely ramble on forever. 'Effort' for me means giving the protagonist opportunities to act in ways that reflect actual human behaviours and values, and to provide a wide variety of those opportunities, and for them to make sense and be emotionally resonant. Basically, I want choices that feel relevant to the story, and that feel like actual choices. I have no doubt that it is very difficult to achieve, especially in the framework of typical RPG gameplay. As far as recent examples, there were definitely parts of Dragon Age that felt like this, largely due to the generally very awesome (but still woefully underutilized) origin stories. I remember convincing some noblewoman to murder her own son and feeling like it had actually emerged from a series of smaller choices I had made, instead of just being selected from a menu of options-whose-consequences-were-obvious.

Though again, DA starts out with this very strong protagonist-focused story and then proceeds to spend the rest of the game washing that out completely, replacing it with the sort of blank-slate-protagonist that features in most modern RPGs. Most of the good writing in DA is on behalf of the NPC companions and their characterization; this is because they are actually allowed to have character. Like, only Alistair could be the guy who Alistair's (super-cliched, but that's fine) story is about. But the story about your character could be anyone -- not any one of a range of fascinating, coherent possibilities, just... anyone at any given moment.

[eldaec]

I think that is one of the main reasons da2 went with a named protagonist.

I've said this before, but DAO would be a better game if you didn't get to create a character and just had to pick one of party as a lead.

[stray]

I think that's why I actually like DA2 a little more. It's more personal. As basic as that is, it's a rare thing among most of these games. Some JRPGs might do it better though.

[Sky]

Oh, there's an angle I don't remember seeing in the TOR ragging. Not as good as jrpg, FUCK YEAH.

Rock on to 400.

I want pre-pubescent upskirts, and I WANT THEM NOW!

Note: I do not want them

[Murgos]

This LFD debate keeps on coming up as though the game is going to fall apart with out it.  This is the third of fourth time I've seen a multi-page debate about how its lack at launch is going to cripple the game permanently.  Seriously?  It's just not that critical.  Is it nice to have?  Sure, it's a convenience.  But that's pretty much all it is.  MMO's have managed to run for quite a while and have groups in dungeons without it.  I.e. "/shout LFG lvl 35 Tank-Spec Guardian for XXX Flashpoint."  actually works well enough most of the time.  Or, if you're around some of the pushier people, clicking yes on "XxXSephirothXXXx would like to invite you to a group." seems to work also.

The dev's are tracking pretty much everything that can be tracked numerically at the moment and that includes numbers of groups formed, where they go, how long they stay together, where they have large numbers of deaths, where they get stuck, where they go afk and take a breather, how many that go into a dungeon complete it and etc...  They've shown examples of all this stuff plotted out on 3-D zone maps a couple of times now and talked about it at different conventions.

Apparently all that data mining has given them the impression that people aren't having much of a problem making groups and going into dungeons without a LFD tool, so it's on the list of 'post-launch' enhancements.

[Numtini]

It will continue to be a huge controversy because at least from watching Rift, there is a group who are LFD advocates and come at it with the same zeal that PVPers used to go after games demanding full open PVP. I don't think that actual group formation abilities have a whole lot to do with it.

I think there's a combination of things driving it. I suspect a lot of these people don't like MMOs and they don't want to game with other people and they appreciate the random tools system's tendency to turn people into bots. They're inevitably the first ones to demand that the LFD system have high requirements so they don't need to do strategize or work with people who aren't optimal. Really LFD dungeons are a different play style than non-random challenging dungeons are. I hope that at some point a gaming company realizes this and puts in random anonymous ones that are easy along with a second set of competitive difficult ones.

I also have a personal guess based on their behavior on boards that there may be some very good reasons that they don't find groups easily without a tool and that their disbelief that people act more rudely when the tool is added is because they're the ones who are doing so.

[sam, an eggplant]

This game should have Revan in it..

And finish the fucking story. 

It does.

[eldaec]

Yeah, but not in a way you'll like.

[Simond]

LFD is a core requirement for MMOs now just as much as "solo to level" was after WoW launched. Sure you can say "Well I didn't need it in game_x" but that's about on a par with saying "There was nothing wrong with sitting in camps in Guk hoping for nameds to spawn".

[Fabricated]

I spent like 4+ years in WoW having to wait for people to log on to run anything, or herding cats just to get 4 random people who were likely terrible so I could half-complete a dungeon. I kinda agree LFD is pretty much needed now; especially for leveling content after the majority of the initial playerbase hits level cap.

[Surlyboi]

LFD's about as core as herpes.

And your equivocation to camping Guk doesn't hold water.

I agree with Numtini here, the majority of people pushing for LFD are lazy, anti-social gamers that are just looking for a quick in and out. I'm not the biggest fan of forced grouping in an MMO, but this game doesn't need LFD at launch and probably won't need it at all.

And honestly, fuck wow and all the lame shit it brought to MMOs.

[Ruvaldt]

So it is cross-server LDoN from EQ, fair enough.

LDoN was made up of randomized dungeons though, didn't teleport people to the dungeons and didn't matchmake groups.  You still had to cobble together your own group from those people who were available.  WoW LFD matchmakes groups and teleports people directly there, I think.

[kildorn]

People are just looking at it from a WoW standpoint.  In WoW all the dungeons are off in buttfuck areas of the map.  In TOR all the Flashpoints and Operations launch from one place.  

So basically your fleet area is the equivalent of Stormwind except all the dungeons are right there.

So.. there's no reason to NOT have a teleport to instance concept, since it's not like they're making you explore to the entrance.

My objection is less "walk to bumblefuck" and more "don't make me hang around a non adventure zone to find a goddamned group, because I want to play your GAME, not play /trade chat spam"

Basically, if it's going to take an hour to form a group, I want to spend that hour doing something that interests me. Not spamming chat channels while standing still in the fleet area. I log into the game to have fun. If I log into an MMO and spend 45 minutes standing around NOT having fun, I'm going to go do something else instead of play your stupid game.

edit: I consider this to be as core a concept in modern gaming as "if I hit join server in your FPS, and it spins on "looking for server" for 45 minutes every day, I'm not likely to continue playing said game", because the fun to waiting ratio is off.

[Surlyboi]

And that's core, FOR YOU. Which is fine. But I'm willing to bet for every person that wants to hop in to a game and do shit only to be suddenly whisked to a dungeon, there's a few other people that find that experience akin to being punched in the nuts repeatedly.

If I do a dungeon once, that's enough for me. There's plenty of other shit to do in this game that doesn't require me grouping with a bunch of people and crawling through some dungeon repeatedly in hopes of some looting rare purple foozle-whacker.

[Sky]

I liked LFD in Rift, to a degree.

Pros

- I can go about my normal gaming if there's not a group ready, teleport in and then be placed back directly where I left off
- Don't have to monitor chat channels to put together a group
- No cat herding

Cons

- Don't really need it early on and it does break up immersion/community until the game gentrifies, and TOR might be an oddball because it's basically an anti-Rift because alt rolling is awesome where in Rift it was so repetitive as to nauseate

Maybe they could implement it like a standard quick-travel system, where you have to have run the instance once in the traditional fashion before you unlock it in LFD?

[Rendakor]

And that's core, FOR YOU. Which is fine. But I'm willing to bet for every person that wants to hop in to a game and do shit only to be suddenly whisked to a dungeon, there's a few other people that find that experience akin to being punched in the nuts repeatedly.

If I do a dungeon once, that's enough for me. There's plenty of other shit to do in this game that doesn't require me grouping with a bunch of people and crawling through some dungeon repeatedly in hopes of some looting rare purple foozle-whacker.

Right, but adding in /LFD doesn't make your life any worse. You can go do each dungeon once then ignore it until you level into a new one (and you can even form your group the old way if you're so inclined); while it's exclusion actually sucks for those of us who want it.

Sky, WoW tried forcing you to run to the instances before you could LFD them but it was pretty annoying when you were trying to queue with your friends but people didn't have them unlocked. A night of "let's run a quick dungeon" turns into "let's run across the world unlocking the dungeons for everyone" which defeats the purpose of an easy LFD system.

[Murgos]

Right, but adding in /LFD doesn't make your life any worse.

And we're back to, it's convenient but not a requirement.

[kildorn]

As a game progresses, lacking a form of remote queuing also seems to turn leveling instances into ghost towns from my experience.

On launch, you'll have a spread of players doing shit. A year later, you'll have a trickle of new players and alts, but nobody bothering to spend the required three hours trying to get a group together for an instance they'd have outleveled if they just spent that time grinding.

[sinij]

This LFD debate keeps on coming up as though the game is going to fall apart with out it. 

Game itself might be a complete and finished product without LFD/some other feature; but any feature "that WOW has" _MUST BE INCLUDED_ if SWTOR wants to out-DIKU WoW.

[Rokal]

I agree with Numtini here, the majority of people pushing for LFD are lazy, anti-social gamers that are just looking for a quick in and out.

You have just described 95% of MMO players. The feature is popular because most people are lazy and don't want to spend their game time manually forming a group and then traveling to the dungeon. Often they aren't social enough to want to speak to other people or lead a group themselves.

If SWTOR wants to steal a large chunk of the MMO pie, it needs to have feature parity with the most popular MMOs.

[Surlyboi]

I agree with Numtini here, the majority of people pushing for LFD are lazy, anti-social gamers that are just looking for a quick in and out.

You have just described 95% of MMO players. The feature is popular because most people are lazy and don't want to spend their game time manually forming a group and then traveling to the dungeon. Often they aren't social enough to want to speak to other people or lead a group themselves.

If SWTOR wants to steal a large chunk of the MMO pie, it needs to have feature parity with the most popular MMOs.

And if people aren't going to play a game because they can't tick a checkbox on a fucking feature list, the game is better off without them.

[Goreschach]

Would it be entirely pointless to point out that the need for lfd and quick instanced dungeon access stems entirely from mmo's being entirely dinggrats based with gameplay totally lacking in any sort of actual fun?

[Paelos]

LFD is a fine feature is you don't start doing it cross-server. There has to be some level of community building through it. Cross-server just takes that and kicks it in the balls.

It sounded like a good idea when Blizzard did it because queue times went down for DPS. However, I think it irrevocably damaged their game, and in the end didn't make enough of a dent. No amount of begging, pleading, incentivizing, or cajoling will fix the trinity issues of LFD when 90% of your players are DPS.

[Surlyboi]

Would it be entirely pointless to point out that the need for lfd and quick instanced dungeon access stems entirely from mmo's being entirely dinggrats based with gameplay totally lacking in any sort of actual fun?

This. Yet another reason I don't think TOR will need it.

[eldaec]

LFD is a fine feature is you don't start doing it cross-server. There has to be some level of community building through it. Cross-server just takes that and kicks it in the balls.

It sounded like a good idea when Blizzard did it because queue times went down for DPS. However, I think it irrevocably damaged their game, and in the end didn't make enough of a dent. No amount of begging, pleading, incentivizing, or cajoling will fix the trinity issues of LFD when 90% of your players are DPS.

In swtor the game doesn't have an easy way to spot dpstards and send them to the back of the bus (since the difference is at a spec level). So in this context it would just produce groups of 4 DPS dudes and no trinity players at all.

[caladein]

LFD is a fine feature is you don't start doing it cross-server. There has to be some level of community building through it. Cross-server just takes that and kicks it in the balls.

It only works if it's cross-server, at least from the low level perspective, unless your servers can just handle huge numbers of concurrent users.  Even 5-10 times what a WoW server can have before queues might not be enough if your server is very tilted towards one faction or another.

LFD is only optional if you don't care about pre-cap group PvE (after the first few months of a title/new expansion) or about any players who want to do "unpopular" dungeons for lore/quests/whatever.

[Rokal]

And if people aren't going to play a game because they can't tick a checkbox on a fucking feature list, the game is better off without them.

They'll play it, they just might not stick around if they find end-game content to be a chore to organize. Can SWTOR be a success without a LFD tool? Depends on what you consider a success. EA/Bioware has ambitious goals for the game, and I don't think they can meet and maintain those goals without keeping content accessible in the way that a LFD tool does.

Maybe I'm wrong and everyone will embrace forming their own groups and fostering social relationships in-game, but I just don't see it happening.

[Paelos]

LFD is a fine feature is you don't start doing it cross-server. There has to be some level of community building through it. Cross-server just takes that and kicks it in the balls.

LFD is only optional if you don't care about pre-cap group PvE (after the first few months of a title/new expansion) or about any players who want to do "unpopular" dungeons for lore/quests/whatever.

They wait longer. BFD. If they are doing a dungeon once for a quest, I could care less if it takes them a day to get it. I'd much rather THAT be the problem than the reverse of anonymous assholes kicking each other and screaming like children because they'll never see anyone in that group again.

Also, I don't think pre-cap dungeons should exist. They serve only to annoy the shit out of every person who is asked to run some alt through the damn thing for the rest of our gaming lives.

[kildorn]

LFD doesn't even need to port you anywhere to serve a purpose. That purpose is to take a spammy inefficient system (spamming chat channels 24 DPS LFG XX YY ZZ! for 45 minutes), and automate it. It knows that DPS and X other players are looking for the same instance at the same level, and deals with it.

The hatred of it strikes me as raging against automatic checkout lines at the grocery store. It's simply automating something silly that's done better by a small shell script :P

If anything, the people using LFD are just as anti social as the people who never group outside their guild. The only social aspect they're lacking is.. spamming a spammy channel and hoping everyone else who would be interested happens to be both in the channel and looking at that chat tab at the time.

I'm not saying "you must let me spam queue an instance for my l33t dropz!", I'm just saying that spamming a chat channel is a silly inefficient method of doing things. If the channel is wide enough, it's just used as a spammy chat channel. If it's local enough to not be a spammy chat channel, it lacks the reach to get to all interested parties.

Cross server/not cross server is just a scale thing. Build the system with a goal time in mind to form a group (say, 15 minutes), if it can't form a group on it's own server in 15 minutes, you can assume there isn't a large enough pool of interested parties to work with, and expand to cross server. Community AND efficiency!

[Fordel]

LFD has nothing to do with how assholes act, neither does anonymity.