On the Two Fundamental Issues of SWTOR's Success

I don't really think it was Anakin as the center of the universe that was the problem with the prequels. It was the fact that George Lucas (no disrespect) can't write his way out of a paper bag without somebody to edit his material. And nobody had the balls to tell him that for the prequels, like they did in the original trilogy. His main ideas, and his ability to create a compelling world, are generally quite good. But writing a script is just not really his forte.

Anakin could easily have been a very compelling character, with the right dialog and story. There are lots of good stories about a chosen one. Have you ever read Dune? Yeah, the later books fall down a bit, but the original book is amazing. Maybe it's hard, though, to turn a character you're supposed to cheer for at the beginning into a villain. Not sure I've seen that pulled off very successfully in any form, now that I think about it.

If you're right in two months time I'll buy you a pint.

If this game is still considered a success at that point without fixing character respsonsiveness and playability I'll eat my hat. If I'm right and subscriptions nosedive due to a faulty combat system and appalling character responsiveness I insist that you buy me a pint.

You're all so obsessed with the trees that you all keep ignoring the wood.

Great writeup, and very good points. Bioware should hire you.

Great post, OP.

I don't get it.

You lost me when you tried to insinuate that some how the Star Wars universe doesn't divide nicely into factions.

Republic vs. Empire, then
Rebellion vs. Empire

It's been pretty much the same throughout. This is the problem when you keep confusing the story content with game mechanics. You're so busy trying to compare this game to KOTOR that you've forgotten what Star Wars was about.

It's pretty tough to build a combat mechanics system when you're trying to give people points for not doing any combat. This is where you have to separate the notions of living in the Star Wars universe and living in a game created around the Star Wars universe.

People had a huge problem with this when Star Trek Online launched. They just couldn't put their heads around the notion that a game where all you did was fly around and took biological samples from planets wouldn't sell very well.

The movie content must be re-purposed for the game. Jedi Knights who run around not killing anything and only ever light up their lightsabers during practice sparring at the Jedi Temple aren't any more fun than the fencing opponents in Summer Games II.

What did you expect Jedi to do? Run around resolving negotiations? So mechanics are devised to create a combat system, and so that every type of character doesn't have the same mechanic feel to it, different systems are developed. Now sure, maybe they could have chosen different words than "Focus" and "Centering", but are you saying it GENUINELY confused you when the cut scene after your battle used the same terms? Is it really that difficult to separate yourself from the game and the story?

To me, the building up of "focus" meant more about not charging head-first into a saber fight and slicing your arm off. Instead you start out with some slower maneuvers and acclimate yourself to the feel of the saber again before you start doing some tricky surgical work.

Now the one thing I will say is that as I ran around Tatooine, I did think about precisely the situation that you were bringing up. The slaughtering of the sand people made Anakin into a whiny sociopath and transitioned Padmé into the dumbest sack of rocks in the galaxy.

And here I was, doing the same. My response? I hauled out the assault cannon and toasted up some more sand people. It's a game, not a existential morality test of my own life.

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Everybody wants their chance to be the final predictor as to SWTOR's success or failure. We've had the numbers fights. We've had the subscriber's fights. We've had the This Isn't WOW fights. We've had the This IS WOW fights. And now we have someone trying to compare this game to other games and then use the other games as a proxy to determine success or failure.

If you're actually writing a college thesis about game design, then good for you and good luck. Start by getting the differences in story for a movie and story for a game down. Then start talking about the actual game rather than some other game.

Otherwise, it's been 15 days, my friend. Just relax.

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Your points are mostly valid, although highly opinion based, but your comments regarding "progress" and WotLK and Cata seem off base.

Since WotLK WoW has been losing subs even with these new and improved features. Dual spec and LFD have just as many people who dislike them as people who want them, the streamlining of the talent trees was also highly contentious and was, in my humble opinion, the laziest response ever to bloated trees and "cookie cutter" specs.

You may be right that SWTOR is "dated", but new does not always equal better...

Source please?
Where's the user-survey showing this?

Really good stuff, OP.

Make a post about either of them or go count positions in the several already created posts. I'll wait...