CHOICE IS AN ILLUSION - not an RPG - MMO on rails

In Fallout 3 I killed that DJ in the Washington ruins, which then proceeded to mess up the entire story line because he was a necessary character. Now that's freedom of choice. He shouldn't have been rude to me and maybe he'd still be alive. But that ability to forge your own destiny is what attached me to that game and gives it a great memory in my mind. The story was my own, the decision to kill him was my own.

Elder scrolls are much the same - I don't know what you're talking about. You can kill whoever you want in Elder Scrolls, steal from whoever you want... Kill someone and take over their house, or be a bandit hiding out in the woods, or a noble wizard whose friends with the king, CHOICE is the beauty of Elder Scrolls, and on top of that the quests/enemies actually provide a challenge as you proceed.

Skyrim is that way ---->

My first ~15 levels or so I made choices made as if I were roleplaying (something I hardly EVER do in games). I wanted to feel connected to my character.

I killed a few NPCs who were real a-holes, and I saved some other people who didn't deserve a grisly fate. Then went to the light/dark side vendors and saw all of the relics were based on your light/dark points.

I had accrued 1200 light side and 1050 dark side. I could use exactly zero relics in the game.

Worst game design.

Ever.

So... you want specific quest rewards (companion, etc), but you don't want to do the quests to get them....

Yeah. That makes sense.

"You have to do all the quests!"
"No, you don't. You only need to do a small number of the total available to be able to progress."
"But then you don't get the cool stuff from the quests you don't do!"
/facepalm

LOL.. ^^This.

Also, without giving away too much, there's an instance in the Sith Warrior campaign where a companion betrays you. Yet you don't have the choice to kill him/her. You're pretty much forced to allow them back into your crew.

So let me get this straight. You just agreed that every time you roll a new class, 50% of the content you see will be a fairly engaging story that you have never seen before? Let that sink in. Half of the quest content you see when you start a new class is totally new, every time, whether it's your second character or your eigth. Yet somehow this is inferior to getting to decide if you want to kill 10 tigers in a forest or 10 crocdiles in a swamp at level 20?

If the aesthetics of the zones are that important to you, then yeah, you can call that a problem if you want. I personally place a lot more value on seeing new story content than I do on what the environment I'm in looks like. I'm one of those guys who reads the quest log in WoW so that I know what's going on =p

I don't like Balmorra. So I went to Balmorra, did my class quest (which I enjoyed thoroughly and the ending was hilarious) and maybe 3 side quests. Then I leveled up the rest of the way to 20 from Hammer Station and PvP. There are still 3 group quests on Balmorra that I haven't done yet for my next character (which are a ton of xp), and there's always space missions. See? Options.

Guess what... That was in game during beta but too many players complained when they realized they needed them for Crew Skills etc... The choice was thus taken out because too many players didn't think through what they were doing and did something stupid and wanted it reversed. Maybe if there weren't so many people in this world who didn't think things through we could have nice things. However, there are far more of these people than there are people who think things through and thus we cannot have nice things.

OK lets clear this.

WOW (2004): "you have reached level 60. Go do these quests to get X".
WOW (2012): "you have reached level 60. Please visit your trainer".

SWTOR (2012): "go do these quests from level 1, else you are not getting companion, cannot leave planet, cannot get spaceship and go anywhere".


I am not sure what is so hard to understand here, SWTOR is a most linear game on rails... If you do not see it, well I do not care anymore.