Design decisions and why the game engine hurts TOR

Excellent post, OP.

Dear Bioware,

Read it.

A friend just asked me what I think of high-level content. Here's my reply, verbatim:

Let's hope they fix that.

Perhaps the Original Poster should hire a professional voice actor to read/perform/interpret the Original Post, and then post the video on youtube for all the world to see and enjoy! In fact, I think we should all do that. Text is... well, it's just plain old archaic. No way to tell a story, that's for sure.

Now, who could I get to do the VOs for my posts? Does Clint Eastwood do VO work? Bill Shatner? Anyone know? Morgan Freeman would be perfect, but I suspect he's inundated with VO requests. Hmm, I wonder if Rich Little can do a convincing Morgan Freeman. Might be worth looking into...

I agree there just is virtually nothing 'slow paced' that is really social. Trading will happen out of necessity and you don't need to be in the social areas to do it, global chat/trade chat to make the connection as well as trade network sales

Another issue with the fleet is it brings too many people together who often have 'nothing' in common. The level 10-12's gearing up after leaving their dead end starter world, getting crafting skills, checking out the faction trade network, etc. The various people under 50 doing FP, using the FTN, etc, then the 50's. Many of these people are drawn together but have no real reason, save a few, to interact with each other.

Don't get me wrong I'm not against the fleet I just see too many 'missed opportunities' to do it better.

You can't force people to socialize and so on but you can give them means to do so which are severely lacking at present. It also helps if people are in the same place for a common cause which various leveled players doesn't really accomplish. Differing level players have trade in common, vendors, possibly joining a guild and that's about it.

Now there could be ways to fix that but we don't have them yet and who knows when/if we will.

The fleet works right now more like a rest stop on a highway, you get your fuel, use the restroom, buy something to eat/drink and leave or linger if you have nothing to do. If you linger you literally have nothing to do do there save running around on a mount or LFG waiting. There really isn't any reason/purpose to 'socializing' with these strangers all doing the same things on their way to somewhere else because there are no mechanisms to do so.

I agree the game is unoptimized, but you can hardly blame that on the Hero Engine. All the fault lies with Bioware.

They leased the Engine years ago and have been modifying it ever since. I highly doubt the code for TOR even closely resembles the Hero engine you would receive if you were to lease it from the company today.

this game was made with the hero engine

check out hero's site, only 2, TWO games have been released with it, SWTOR and faxion online, that closed after 4 months, due to it being crap, and like 5 unreleased/unfinished crap titles their own sites don't talk about

get a new engine, period

1. Prior usage does not mean a new product can't use the engine. How is a product supposed to grow and expand if people use logic like that? If you perhaps educated yourself before posting you would know the bioware is using their own verison of the hero engine, not the version you see advertised online.

2. If you think they can just "get a new engine" I have a nice time share I'd like to sell you.

Bioware and the makes of the hero engine have already gone into a lot of detail about the engine.

Suffice to say, you are 100% wrong.

Sorry but I need to bring the bad news.
you can't change engine

game is made on

after the release!

(yes, that's the largest font possible, but I hope big size == better understanding. :P )

You can, actually.

its just really, really expensive and really, really time consuming.