Do Worlds Feel Lifeless?

I never played LotRO but the whole day/night and weather thing sounds really cool. I'd be up for that. Heck, I'd be up for something like an occasional sand storm on Tatooine that gives you a mini debuff or something. Just something random that would spice up the gameplay and make you think.

I personally would like to see all of these aestics added to the game.

But I am wondering if the hero engine is the problem. Perhaps one has nothing to do with the other but as the engine was blamed for the reason why it cant hold a max pop then what it is set today, then perhaps it also has to do with it not being able to handle all of these aestic type effects?

Just a thought.

Is this true? Not that a dev should have to have the fact that the worlds are dead pointed out.

In answer to the OP, not only do the worlds feel lifeless, they are lifeless. In WOW, I can ride out of Stormwind and see rabbits, squirrles, wolves, bears, cows, lambs, and so on moving around and adding context to the world. A troop of guards in formation marches past me. I can see birds fly overhead and see their shadows move past me on the ground. I hear the birds chirping and the wind whooshing.

Beyond that there are so many things. For example, compare the mounts in Star Wars to WOW. In Star Wars they mostly look like second hand rejects from the junk yard with no animation other than two glowing points on the jets. In WOW my felsteed in comparison has fire in it's eyes and on its hooves that flame in and out, it's legs move, it's head bobs up and down, and it's tail swishes. A side view of it in motion looks like a stallion running. And that is a basic beginning mount for a Lock. Some of the more advanced mounts are just spectacular.

Unfortunately everything in Swtor has a dead and sterile and boxed in (linear) feeling and that is one major failing in the basic game design. I have wondered if that was a limitation of the game engine or if the devs ran out of time before launch and could not put such things in the game. But to think that this may have been a purposeful design path would just shock me.

I think this dead quality to the environments being described is part of a larger flaw that scripted events and day/night cycles wouldn't help with. Nothing EVER changes in this game. No matter how many times you go to a certain spot on a certain planet their will always be the exact same NPC's in the exact same spot. No matter how many times you fly a space mission, the exact same enemy will appear in the exact same spot at the exact same time. There's that space mission with the asteroids? About 3:30mins into the mission, an enemy fighter appears on the right and quickly smashes into an asteroid. If you manage to shoot it before it hits the rock... you get no experience. Why? Because that ship isn't really there, it's programed to destruct, shooting it doesn't alter plan.

I've enjoyed playing SWTOR. Got two toons to 50, couple more over 40. But... I'm bored. There's a structured repetition to the game that grows increasingly obvious over time. I'm out. I'll keep my eye on the game, and if things get better I'll try again.

Yeah the space missions are very stale now. I've done them all so many times I have them all memorized.

For me it's more of a question of feeling like I am in a Star Wars environment or not. But, places like Dromund Kaas where it rains all the time, it doesn't really look or feel that way. Where are all the reflections of light from wet surfaces? The thunder clapping and so forth. The Graphical design is the issue there, not the style but the design. It looks as though it was approved with bare minimum details. Lighting, shading, environmental sounds etc. Plus, no movement. In life, just before it rains you can hear and see the the wind throwing the trees back and forth for one example. All these things need to be improved upon to give a more lifelike environment. There shouldn't be that much of a hindrance to complete what they started. Unless it is beyond the capabilities of the game engine...

Wow, this thread has far exceeded my expectations. I had no idea so many people felt the same way. I really think, as previous posters mentioned and that I failed to mention, is that more ambient sounds and at least a loop of music would go a long way in setting the scene and making the world a bit more enjoyable to live in.

No, you are not alone. I think that's the thing that kept me playing SWG for so many years, the fact the planets felt like real planets, mainly for the following reasons:

* No loading screens on planets.. Massive landscapes (sure, graphics a little dated now)
* Player Cities..... BH collecting, camping people in their player house... so much fun
* Mass open world PVP that spanned planets literally..
* Spaceports on each planet that let you go to any planet, from any planet (almost, excepting mustafar)
* Spaceships that were like actual space ships.. Freedom of flight, fly to another planet physically if you
want the nostalgic approach, or hyperspace...
* The allowance of hundreds and hundreds of players on a single map
* Practically zero instancing.
* Exploration - SWG allowed you to explore the landscape and find all the cool landmarks.. SWTOR makes me
run into invisible walls, or my speeder hits an "exhaustion zone"
* Most importantly... The ability to speak to the opposing faction!

A lot of people that found this an issue earlier on have simply quit, unfortunately.

We're kind of into the 2nd or even 3rd phase of people realising where the weaknesses are now, hopefully Bioware can get on top of things and solve or at least alievate these things (they couldn't solve the loading screen/travel issues, for example, but they did a decent job of aliveating them with a few changes).

I have to say it was nice when they let us use our speeders in the starport, was one thing that always pee'd me off about SWG lol...