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BioWare, your environmental designers deserve a raise


Telnik

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LOL yes brilliant design from the BioWare lads! Wow, just wow. Getting schooled by a 7 year old game with 1/3rd the budget. Even when you have 7 years of absolute detail on what your competitor has done, what works, what doesn't and you go to that sort of effort?
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Frankly, this game doesn't have "environments."

 

An environment implies that it's a geophysical area that you can explore and interact with.

 

This game doesn't have exploration or interaction. It's a series of hubs and corridors, supplemented by nicely painted and designed (aesthetic) set-pieces that you can look at. The "areas" (I will not call them environments or worlds) are so static and linear they may as well be paintings.

Edited by YooYooMa
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I think the issue is in the fact that environments in SWTOR are either very rich (e.g. Nar Shaddaa outside of spaceport), or very poor (e.g. screenshot) -- they are not uniformly all good, but I don't think they're uniformly all bad, either. Edited by Goshnye
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Frankly, this game doesn't have "environments."

 

An environment implies that it's an area that you can explore.

 

This game doesn't have exploration. It's a series of hubs and corridors, supplemented by albeit nicely painted and designed (aesthetic) set-pieces that you can look at.

 

Yes, THIS^ is the only real problem with the "environments"

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Its clear you chose a very busy screen for WoW and chose an indoor open space area for your comparison.

 

Not much more to say, obviouse transparent comparison, now you go see if you can get Crash Bandicoot through the wicked witch forrest lol.

 

Oh with that baby rattle stuck to his back. No Baby rattles please.

Edited by CygnusMX
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art direction is pretty weak across the board. they have a great "canvas" if you will and managed to pull off some awesome stuff but about 60-70% of the time its quite boring. not to say WoW was a lot better, but they have a much better structure of enveloping a player in the game's environment.

 

SWTOR gives me the feeling of them trying to be sorta like SWG with big empty useless spaces, but with Mass Effect type of artwork which is a very minimalist sorta thing and leaves to be desired (solid design but very little detail, mostly striped lines and clean cuts).

 

WoW surrounds the player, SWTOR seems to just kinda be underneath me while im going about. Though i liked Tattooine for example. But a lot of the levels are just huge for the sake of it.

 

A lot of the levels in this game remind me of The Barrens in WoW. Lots of land with a few random mobs and nothing going on. You'd think Bioware would've adapted to the later trends in mmo design but they're still emulating 2004 approaches.

Edited by Tremk
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WoW surrounds the player, SWTOR seems to just kinda be underneath me while im going about. Though i liked Tattooine for example. But a lot of the levels are just huge for the sake of it.

 

I think that's the reason why many people liked Tattooine, it actually represents the environment of a desert planet very well ("exhaustion" zones notwithstanding).

 

The "city planets", on the other hand, were supposed to represent bustling, busy environments full of people -- but ended up looking like "empty connected boxes", as some people have said.

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  • 5 weeks later...
I think that's the reason why many people liked Tattooine, it actually represents the environment of a desert planet very well ("exhaustion" zones notwithstanding).

 

The "city planets", on the other hand, were supposed to represent bustling, busy environments full of people -- but ended up looking like "empty connected boxes", as some people have said.

 

 

+1 on the city planets. Nar Shadda looks devoid of life. it needs alot more npc's roaming around doinf stuff. give it a living city feel.

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I lol'd pretty hard. Truth in its entirety. Budget of what, $200 Million? $198 Million of that went to the head chief exec, and they just accumulated interest on the 2 million to pay everyone else, amirite? Just look at the website.

 

 

 

For christ sakes, look at Fourseasons Hotel. Their new site was $18 million. If they spent half of that they could have made a decent site.

Edited by Verysafety
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I lol'd pretty hard. Truth in its entirety. Budget of what, $200 Million? $198 Million of that went to the head chief exec, and they just accumulated interest on the 2 million to pay everyone else, amirite? Just look at the website.

 

 

 

For christ sakes, look at Fourseasons Hotel. Their new site was $18 million. If they spent half of that they could have made a decent site.

 

 

 

APB/ Real Time Worlds debacle revisited?

 

 

 

and that site actually cost 18mil to make? REALLY? wow.. I knew i should have gont into web design instead of hedge fund management...

Edited by porpisehork
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APB/ Real Time Worlds debacle revisited?

 

 

 

and that site actually cost 18mil to make? REALLY? wow.. I knew i should have gont into web design instead of hedge fund management...

 

I head my own business and I am a web developer and I can say that the scale of pay per website goes from $5000- $18,000,000+ ..one of these days I will land a bounty that large, and yes. Google it. http://www.tnooz.com/2012/01/12/news/four-seasons-unveils-18-million-dollar-website-as-luxury-travel-grows/

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