Dear team of Bioware. And dear community

I just brought my first character to level 50 and finished all class and world quests. It was fun!

My background: No MMOs so far. Played KoTOR, which I loved, and stuff like Battlefront II.

First, I regard this a great game! I cannot but admire the tons of hard work that was put into it over years. "Chapeau" – Kudos to you!

Have I had as much fun as expected? As much as I once had? Here's my summary with some things I'd like to see improved.

It's all about Immersion

Regardless if gamers are more into RPGing or MMOing, I bet after all it comes down to whether a player can dive into the worlds created - whether she or he "buys the story". Thousands "bought" the story of KoTOR, right?! The level of how much I can "live" the game equals the level of satisfaction.

From here on I just focus on how successfully SWTOR managed to make me immerse myself in it.

Planets

The planets were (are) simply overwhelming to me. A perfect playground. At least in theory. In fact, it's so broad that the map needed to be refined to perfectionism during beta. But with it I lost the aspect of exploration to a certain extent - the world was perfectly abstracted away – so it made me loose contact.

You naturally connect to the world when you discover it by your own. Thereby making it your own, step by step. The most fun I recently had was when I decided to switch off the UI (and so the map) more often than not. You cannot deal without a map in such giant worlds – that's true! But being focused on it all the time made me loose contact to the world.

I became less of an explorer and more of something like a donkey racing for the next carrot. And so I lost my view on the scenery. So by that perfect tool I actually came to treat the world as fast food.

That's why now I only bring up the UI in combat, before conversations (a sad necessity here) and as soon as I need orientation which is about once or twice a minute for some seconds. That's it. That helped me to immerse myself in the planets a lot more.

This "problem" is due to the massive scale of MMOs, it seems. (I can't present a “solution”, just my work-around above.) Point is, I surprisingly feel less immersed in the planets of SWTOR compared to the way simpler planets of KoTOR. Because in SWTOR I feel less of an explorer and more like an overwhelmed visitor. (Admit, that's totally my "problem".)

My character ... and me!

The cool thing about KoTOR when it hit the shelves was, that you became one with that character. Massive immersion. So what about SWTOR? Here there is ground for huge improvements that are not so hard to implement, I guess.

Whether you are into MMOs or more into role playing, you want to be very close to your character, right? But the dialog system we see now – familiar since Mass Effect – creates a huge distance between me (in front of the screen) and the character – "that guy" – within the game. It's always “me” and “him”.

This hiding of the option texts actually massively hinders the inner process of a player melting with her/his in-game character. More often that not I was very anxious of what was behind that innocent option of a simple "No." For instance once I had a chance to [Flirt] with a female companion on my ship, but she clearly wasn't my kind, so I (anxiously) opted "No.", which resulted in "him" firmly insulting her. I was like "Oh, no! What an a**hole he is again... ". See? It's “he” – not "me". That innovation is an immersion killer.

So Bioware, don't pamper us too much– doing some text work (means reading) is actually a rewarding process. Having the actual text of the options displayed instead of mystic abbreviations might be less fancy or may even look boring to a lot of players. But to me – and I can imagine to a lot of others – actual texts instead of nebulous abbreviations is the way to make right choices for oneself. Just implement an option in the settings to activate actual texts. Shorten it to 70 letters in case the answer is too long, or whatever. But the solution right now is roulette and is in fact an immersion killer. I am pretty sure you have all voiced dialogs as digital scripts handy. Copy/paste them. (If you sense desperation here, you're right!)

The NPC environment

"Move along if you know what's good for you!" - Aaahhh, the world of Taris when you first walked the open streets back in KoTOR. That was a living thing. Each and every fellow had something to say. Even if it was presented in a balloon, I had the feeling of something very vivid. Now to SWTOR..... I know, you are proud that, quote, "every NPC will be voiced". And in fact it's awesome in quest dialogs. But much to my surprise I found all NPCs not related to quests chatty as fishes. I know the VO has been a massive achievement of yours – and you can righteously be proud of it.

But why did you stop mid-way? Grab that list of actors again, give them a re-call. This time in order to create brief 1-liners and remarks. For instance, when I enter my ship, two guys are doing maintenance on the outside. Just one simple line... "That's a sleek ship you have!" and the factor of immersion is tripled – that easily.

You managed to focus 100% on quest VO and 2% on simple environment VO. Sure, there is some for which I am always grateful as soon as I hear it (cantina of Anchorhead, etc.). There could be 100 times more simple single statements, from my point of view. That would tremendously increase my feeling of being in a living, breathing world. Now it's rather stiff and steril. I look at puppets with strings cut off. (Sorry, maybe too hard.)

Speaking of a world too steril, here comes the next thing I noticed.

Music

Music is an awesome way to have influence on our feelings – Bioware said so in the trailers themselves. But the music I hear is pretty close to radio silence. This is such a big factor, that I really don't understand the decision to design it that way. Sorry to once again and finally point to an 8-years old single-RPG. But with the soundtrack of KoTOR plus triggering it with combat actions and cut scenes, you managed to create a superb experience. In SWTOR that huge opportunity to draw the player deeper into the scenery is almost unused. So this adds to the impression of being in a steril world. This is an additional immersion killer or a wasted potential, respectively, that could have been easily avoided. Again, make it an optional setting, if you're concerned some people don't like to have a more intense sound environment.

My companions

Most of the time I feel lonely in SWTOR. Kind of lost in an endless world. Because no one's around to "mirror" my experiences. There is some stuff I can do on my part. It's an MMO, right? But then ... I never ever felt lonely in KoTOR, which is a single player game! What's the difference?

Things I can do on my part is grouping with others, of course.

So what's on the game's side that makes me feel lonely? What's the difference to an old S-RPG which didn't produce this feeling at all? It's clearly related to my companions! It's been stated over and over, I know, but the level of story of and interaction with the companions are way, way too shallow. Period. Initially you claimed that, quote, "[...] companions are a great tool for us to tell a story [...]", unquote, but here you utterly failed to deliver.

The first companion I encountered has a lot of affection points now, but to no avail. So it isn't me. Here you, Bioware, clearly missed an opportunity to create immersion. Stuff like this – the person and story of Mission Vao, Jolee Bindo, etc. create an affection to them and to the world you're in. I cannot see, why this shouldn't work in SWTOR. You have all the ingredients there. Still, you decided to stop mid-air. Being alone in your ship with some puppets, that care to speak up every 4 days with a couple of lines which don't really sum up to have substance, adds tremendously to the feeling of being alone in endless space and in giant planets with silent and meaningless figures around.

Tutorials

Initially there was another burden that kept me from submerging into SWTOR. Bioware provides a lot of hints: during loading screens and the so-called "tutorials" which present the same depth of information as the online manual. But that are just hints. As a newcomer to the world of MMOs I would have really welcomed in-depth-tutorials on the website that really explained stuff, such as crafting, etc. I learned that bit wise by myself and real tutorials on external websites. That should be improved for newbies.

Conclusion

It may sound contrary to the listed issues I noticed, but the first character in SWTOR was a real fun experience to me. Combat was exciting. Questing was thrilling. The worlds were overwhelming and are beautifully modeled. Hands down to all of those guys who worked their butts off.

Still, the level of immersion didn't come close to what, say, KoTOR and other RPGs had to offer. To me that was due to the factors mentioned. The story line wasn't as epic as the other Star Wars story of Revan, Bastila and Malak – but I guess, it was never meant to be.

In that aspect, I guess, the genre of MMORPGs can never be as convincing as the genre of Single-RPGs. For the scale of an MMO simply doesn't allow to create an experience as tight and persuading as a RPG-world. With that in mind, I think, Bioware did a fantastic job to build up the founding of a real liaison of MMO and RPG.

90% of the talk about how to improve things deal with game mechanics and socializing tools. And that is valuable input. I think, with the "RP" issues addressed mentioned by me and others the SWTOR experience could be massively intensified:

• make displaying full answer texts an option (vs. current abbreviation mode)
  
• have the NPC environment say something
  
• work out way deeper stories for all companions who then could (optionally!) be way more talkative
  
• let us optionally increase the level of sound environment
  

In short, SWTOR to me represents a successful founding of an alliance between MMO and RPG. The eventual accomplishment will be finally achieved once immersion killers such as those above will be dealt with. I regard this as being more important to the satisfaction of the general player base than creating new flashpoints and stuff. (That is focusing on quality not quantity.)

Good thing is, there is still chance to do all this.

That was my SWTOR experience.

(I made this a new thread hoping for a collection of constructive ideas and advises addressing these RP issues.)

Very well written post - I agree with most of your points, especially those about the liveless feeling environment and the wasted potional of the music (because often there just isn't any music.)

This is an additional point, that is important to me:

We need to be able to see our friends class-quest holocom calls (outside of class instances), scenes on their ship and companion dialogues. That is not possible at the moment, and thus we are not able to really share our whole class story with friends - they miss out on important parts. That is really frustrating if you are as interested in their story, as they are in yours.