State of the game

I made this blog to have a place to track my thoughts on the game.  I thought I’d start with the current state of the game.

I think it is safe to say that Bioware’s recent release is highly controversial in the MMO community with loud groups on both sides.  My opinion is Star Wars: The Old Republic is an amazing game with many flaws.  The game is amazing in the sense that they essentially produced 8 Mass Effect style games that intertwined in the same universe and the flaw is everything else.

Bioware is an amazing company and some of my favorite gaming experiences came from their genius.  I first became aware of them when I played Baldur’s Gate.  It’s odd to think about now but before it fantasy games were pretty dead.  It revitalized the genre and made the Bioware a major player.  They followed it up with Planescape:Torment (one of the best RPG’s ever made), then Icewind Dale, and Baldur’s Gate 2.  These games were all masterpieces and showed that the developers in the company knew how to put together a great single player experience.  They moved outside their comfort zone with their next title, Neverwinter Nights, which had a crappy single player game but was always developed as a way to give people that loved the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop game, a way to play the game with friends spread out over vast distances.  The multiplayer aspect of this game was another huge success*.  The next few years were a bit tough as Bioware was trying to figure out what type of company it wanted to be as consoles had taken the place of PCs.  Bioware responded with Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, two games that were critical and commercial successes that crossed platforms.  Not willing to stand on their laurels they developed two new titles with Space Age RPG, Mass Effect and fantasy RPG, Dragon Age which both again set the standard in their genres.

That was the history that EA was counting on when they purchased Bioware in 2007.  Writers at Bioware had been working on another story in the Star Wars galaxy prior to this and with the added capital of EA to back them it was publically announced in 2008 that they were working on a MMO in the StarWars universe.  At the time it was also disclosed that they had 12 full time writers working on the story for 2 years at that point.  At one point the story was meant to be a single player game but now it was going to be an MMORPG.  Star Wars and Bioware fans rejoiced, then they waited.

And waited.  And waited.  Every game convention had a video set in the Old Republic universe and a vague promise that the game would be coming soon.  Fast forward to 2010 and it was hinted that the game was going to be delayed until summer 2011.  Fans were disappointed but happy as we now had a date.  During a later Q+A it was announced that there wasn’t going to be anything in space at launch.  Fans that had grown up wanting to be Luke Skywalker vs the Death Star reacted predictably and message boards exploded with negative comments reguarding the game.  A few months later, Bioware relented and announced that a space shooter on rails was going to be included at launch and they planned to start beta testing the game soon.  A few months passed without a public beta and people started questioning when they could expect to see the game.  In the spring of 2011, Bioware had a big announcement with a website redesign, a series of class videos, a comment that public beta was still a few months away, but that the game might be delayed until mid 2012.  Fans were happy for news but again reacted badly that the game they desperately wanted to play was again being delayed.  A few months later, the beta started and reports from beta testers started leaking that the game had major issues.  Of course Bioware fanboys shouted down the negative press saying the game was brilliant.  People not in the beta were concerned but Bioware had a sterling track record and a promise not to release the game until it was finished.  A few months later Bioware revealed they had invested $100 million into the game to date and it was almost ready and would be released in December 2011.  This caused another round of flamewars on the forums but most fans decided they'd buy the game and decide for themselves.

Bioware released the game in December as promised and I've played a lot the last two months to the point where I feel like an expert the game despite never getting into the beta. My feeling as expressed above is that this is a great game trapped inside a bad game.  I will try to explain it as best as I can by starting off with what the game does well and following that with what it doesn't split into categories: Bugs, Missing Functions, Game Design, and Wishlist.

Things they got right

• Combat – Amazingly tough and balanced combat in single player leveling
• Voice Acting – Superb as always.  They've upped the ante by having a voice actor for every conversation in the game.  I'm sure this design decision did take away resources from other areas and I'm not sure if it was worth the cost.  It's still pretty cool.
• Videos - Only Blizzard is close to them in cutscenes
• 8 character stories – So good it is actually a bit frustrating to play as the wait is sometimes agonizing as you want to know more of the story as quick as possible.  This is the hook that will keep people playing and it is a good one.
• Legacy System – Great idea but currently with no functionality
• Companions – I expect this to be a feature in all future MMOs as this allows class/spec viability at all levels
• Group looting – This should now be the standard in any game.
• Companion selling grey items – Awesome!
• Companion crafting & gathering - Love the concept and it makes botting a bit more difficult
• Swotor Phases are great and much better solution to WoW Phasing except in a few large scale changes of whole cities morphing.

Bugs – I’m going to breeze over this section as any game is going to have bugs at launch and while there have been a few, Bioware has been pretty good at taking care of them quickly.

Missing Functions

• Looking for Group
• Looking for Raid
• No mod ability
• No combat log
• No way to adjust the interface
• No threatmeter
• No guild tools
• No guild bank
• Crafting system extremely basic but difficult to use
• Auction house difficult to use which limits use and popularity of crafting
• Global chat channels – Turn it off by default but allow a global chat channel so players don’t feel so isolated.  There is rarely more than 100 people on any planet/area so it is ridiculously difficult to find someone to help quest.

Game Design

• Long Travel Times – I will hit on this more but I want to start with this because it feels like half of my time is spent travelling to fight leaving the rest to clear inventory space, craft, and actually get into battle
• Spaceports waste a ton of time – It’s a good 1 minute to run through this area every visit to any planet.
• High learning curve for abilities and limited ability to track them – the classes in this game have as many abilities as WoW but with only 4 abilities bars, no cooldown tracker, and no dps meter it is very difficult to know what skill to use next. I can only imagine how frustrated a new MMO player is trying to figure out how to play especially against tough bosses as many abilities are needed to solo these NPCs
• Space travel between planets - Travel to a planet takes easily a minute. I don’t have a huge issue with this but I hate the way it is implemented. In WoW you use a ship/portal to travel between locations. This feels right as in your mind you can imagine being on a ship and travelling over an ocean. Compare this to SWTOR – you are walking through a door but need to wait a minute to get to the other side. The best time to load would have been while you were in “hyperspace”. I realize this is a bit nitpicky but psychologically it is an easier sell to a player that it takes a minute to hyperspace to a planet then second to hyperspace to a planet and a minute to actually exit the ship. Doing this opens up a few things. First, they need to allow planets to load in the background so you can do other things on your ship. The first thing I do when I get on my ship is clear my inventory. It would be nice to mail items as well that would be sent/received once I arrived at the next spaceport. The other thing that would be nice would be to have a universal communicator on board that would allow you to subscribe to global chat channels but also include informational channels like scrolling patch notes or even class tutorials. Things like that would make the time wasted during space travel seem almost unnoticeable
• Add features to Spaceships – An idea I had was to add games on board so there is something to do while crafting/travelling/chatting. The games don’t need to be SWTOR related but anyone “travelling through space” could connect and play one another.  Players need to be able to visit each others ships.  My solution would be a simple method of using the holodeck on your ship to invite other players into your ship as a hologram.  They would be able to walk around the instance but not touch anything.  If they allow players to redesign the interior of their ships it would add to the cool faction immensely when others visit.
• Planets feel dead – If other player characters aren’t moving it feels like nothing is happening
• No central gathering point. Makes the game feel a lot more empty than reality. Also, gives the impression this was done on purpose because the game engine cannot handle large groups of people
• Planet design – Way too big and need more obvious hubs
• Quest design – Need to have more quests located around a hub then a quest that opens up only after everything else is done in that area to move player to next area
• Simplistic Space combat - Either make it good or don’t do it. I have a feeling that the last minute inclusion of space combat put a strain on every team and is a major cause of the current state of the game. I don't mind space combat but it isn't good enough as a stand alone game and the lack of variety makes it get old very quickly.
• No easy way to get back to your spaceship – Really need an option for your robot to pick you up and take you to your spaceship in dock with a 1 hour cooldown.
• Static NPCs that are aren’t targetable. These NPC add as much life to an MMO as a chair. I’m sure were coded this way to save on memory demands but other games are able to add life to NPCs and the fact SWTOR didn’t do this concerns me that the game engine is overtaxed for how the designers made the world.
• No safe zones to travel through areas - Roads should be safe zones for fast transit but many times mobs make it impossible to pass. Nothing is more frustrating than a quest telling you to go somewhere that’s 3 minutes by speeder then getting attacked 2 times on the way making the trip take 10 minutes instead. This is especially true if you’ve already visited the place once but had to go back due to bad quest design.
• Non Instanced dungeon design is bad - One of the reasons for instancing is so that every NPC is there for the player/party/raid to fight and once they die they don't come back (or are on a 30 minute reset timer).  That allows a player to finish a dungeon at a their own pace without needing to race to bosses/NPCs for the necessary kills.  Instances/phases are used a lot but many non-class quests aren't instanced and even the ones that are instanced share a common warehouse/cave/etc filled with non-instanced mobs.  In places that aren't instanced, game designers have to have a relatively quick respawn time so that he next person into the area faces the same challenge and can get the necessary kills for bonus quests and XP progression.  That means that most times when you've finished an area and killed the boss at the end you then need to fight your way back through the mobs you killed a few minutes ago.  This is a problem in most MMOs but SWTOR seems to be the worst I've seen.  That's possibly because they have some of the biggest non instanced dungeons I've seen in a MMO which in some ways is good thing but it is bad in the sense that you have a choice of using your portal to goto a bind spot or fight your way back to the start.  The bind point isn't a great option most times because many of them aren't close to the turn-in NPC.  Neither option is ideal and instead I like what they did in Skyrim as behind every boss in every dungeon is a doorway that leads back to the start of the dungeon.  This design philosophy has been used in many other games (my personal favorite was Deadmines in WOW though that game didn't follow this as often as I'd like).  In SWTOR it usually feels like a 10 minute fight into an area, then a 2 minute fight to do what you need, then a 10 minute fight out.  Add to that the issues with roads I mentioned above and the game feels full of fights you'd rather not do.
• NPC sound bites triggers on the player and not to a location. I’ve been halfway across a city and am still hearing a conversation that is happening on the outskirts of a town.
• Game needs better functionality for character placement when entering a cutscene, portal, PVP, or Flashpoint – For instance every time I run on my ship I am facing the door when I get on the other side. More than once I’ve accidently clicked on the door and exited again. Once I get to my holocommunicator I’m facing the front of the ship to turn in my quest and once the cutscene ends my next step is to go to navigation at the front of the ship to travel to the next stop. As I start moving, I realize that the game turned me to face the rear of the ship during the cutscene and I need to turn around. This is a minor inconvenience and a larger on is PVP or Flashpoints. If I am called to a Flashpoint/PVP by a friend I can more easily get there by using a transport on each planet. What happens when that Flashpoint is done? I need to get back on my ship and travel there using normal means. As I’ve said before this can take 15 minutes depending on where you were. A much better design would be for the game to remember your previous location so you could click on a button in the Flashpoint area and you’d be instantly transported back to your original location.

Wishlist

• Ability to Queue things on an alt and have them mailed once complete
• Mailbox – Open all function
• Mailbox – Remember alts for addressing / auto ship certain mats to alts
• WOW Auctionator functionality (WOW Auctioneer too much)
• Reviewing / queuing / crafting /mailing while on alts
• Legacy bank
• Ship mats from alts if no legacy bank feature

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These things are just off the top of my head and while I'm sure there are dozens more frankly it all makes me mad.  It is obvious that the single player story was the #1 priority for Bioware and that everything else was bolted on to support it.  While starting with their core competency seems like a good idea, in practice it forced design issues that they may never be able to fix.  Added to that is the pressure that I'm sure came from EA to release the game before it was ready.  I understand their reasoning as December 2011 was a perfect time to launch.  Blizzard has been on a 2 year launch cycle since their game came out in 2004.  Waiting until the summer of 2012 would miss the 2011 Christmas buying season and most likely be faced with competition from WOW beta testers.  I'm sure there was a meeting that basically said that going head to head with a WOW expansion was a recipe for disaster and they couldn't afford to wait until 2013.  Instead of scaling back and focusing on the areas of the game that worked well they decided to release the whole thing knowing it was buggy, incomplete and needed core redesign to optimize certain areas of the game.

Planet travel is an good example of the focus on the single players which has caused a poor current product. For example, your ship docking area is only in the game for the class quests and you rarely use them.  Every time you arrive on a planet you need to go through this area to get to the spaceport or orbital docking station.  This isn’t a bad idea in a single player game because players rarely revisit areas once they are finished with them.  In an MMO it is really bad as every trip means additional time spent in an area that is rarely used.  A good example is Dromond Kaas.  That is the capital of the Empire and you are constantly called back there to meet with your superiors.  So the first step is to fly to the planet then run to the back of your ship and exit.  At this point the planet loads and the time wasted varies depending on the planet.  Dromond Kaas is a mid sized planet and usually takes about a minute to load.  After you leave the ship it takes another minute to run through the spaceport then it’s a ride on a speeder to Kaas City.  This is followed by another minute run through town to another speeder which finally takes you to your boss.  Typically your boss only speaks with you for a short cut scene before sending you on to the quest which is usually a starter quest on a new planet.  That means you are soon running back the way you came.  Even if you saved your portal, you still have to run through the spaceport and then get back on your ship.  This easily takes 15 minutes and is not fun.  Imagine if you only have an hour every night to play - Is this the type of game you want?  Imagine instead if all that took place on your ship using the holodeck - Can I haz 15 minutes back?

The goal of any game should be to maximize fun.  That means if a player has an hour of free time the goal should be to let them spend as much time doing whatever they consider fun.  That could range from activities such as crafting, auction house, PVP, soloing primary/alternate characters or end game raiding.  Most people like to do more than one of the above but there isn’t one area that isn’t affected by the design as it exists today.  That is where Bioware has failed and what they need to address quickly.  It isn’t apparent today but soon they are going to start hemorrhaging players and once that happens many of them will be lost forever no matter how many improvements are made.

I do have faith in them and look forward to the fixes as Star Wars is one of my favorite movies and Bioware is one of my favorite developers.  I plan on staying for a long time but I just hope they do it quickly so I'm not the only one left.

* - I have always thought if Neverwinter Nights was released 5 years later and financed by a company like EA it could have been even bigger as there was a lot of money to be made if professional writers were allowed to create cheap 1-2 hours DM-able stories and sell them through an App store with a service like Steam.  It would even allow non-pros a chance to develop something and sell them for a few dollars and the market would reward good design just like it does for the Ipad/Iphone.  That market is out there but everyone is fixated on making the next WoW.