Whats up With Metacritic userscores?

[SilkforCalde]

and i'm out...if you aren't prepared to accept that Bioware has placed the majority of the emphasis on storytelling in SWTOR as what they can uniquely (in their opinion) bring to the MMO market then you are simply flying in the face of almost every word that has been written about the game for the sake of obtuse argument.

Of course you're "out." I just verbally destroyed your post with ease. You have no response and you've provided nothing to back up your conjecture.

[sleekit]

there are 8 individual character arcs Batistarama. one per class.

and tbh imo it comes down to the fact you can only level the first time once and a great many people spend their time in mmos trying to replicate that highly enjoyable first time levelling experience.

ppl who race to end game are not rpg players. they have not came into mmos form the rpg side. they see content as an obstacle. if they had their way hello panda adventure island sry Mists of Pandaria would a big button that simply levelled them to 90 and provided a new class choice.

thing is tho not everyone is like that. some of us have attention spans and don't buy games for playground boasting rights.
we enjoy narrative. we want to play the hero. to have a "role".

its no coincidence both Bioware and ArenaNet are placing an renewed emphasis on narrative in SWTOR and GW2.

it was narrative that built the WarCraft brand. WC3 was one of the greatest storytelling games ever made and make no mistake it sold bucket loads purely off the back of the single player champaign (far, far more than ever even showed face on Battlenet). unfortunately Blizzard has been squandering that legacy and living off past glorys in that department for almost a decade.

Of course you're "out." I just verbally destroyed your post with ease. You have no response and you've provided nothing to back up your conjecture.

no, you just avoided actually addressing any of the points raised.

so i'll ask you, one last time (and see if you can actually address the point) :

do you agree or disagree that Bioware has placed heavy emphasis on the storytelling and narrative in SWTOR ?

yes or no ?

its a simple question.



optional follow up question (that i know you won't answer) :

if the answer is "yes" (and the vast majority of people would conceded that it was unless they were going out of their way to be contrary) then what would you consider that their "focus" with the game ?


oh and PS. you "destroyed" nothing. you are just electrons in the ether. nothing. to. me. someone who still thinks every conversation is an argument to be won. the only reason i said "i'm out" is because talking to people who think like that is utterly pointless and i can have a much better time talking to folks who actually know what a discussion is on half a dozen other gaming websites at least three of which i have open in other tabs atm.

trust me, in 20 years time you'll have no time for this kind of transparent back and forth for the sake of it either...

[Deleted]

Its obvious, they jelly.

[Deleted]

there are 8 individual character arcs Batistarama. one per class.

and tbh imo it comes down to the fact you can only level the first time once and a great many people spend their time in mmos trying to replicate that highly enjoyable first time levelling experience.

ppl who race to end game are not rpg players. they have not came into mmos form the rpg side. they see content as an obstacle. if they had their way hello panda adventure island sry Mists of Pandaria would a big button that simply levelled them to 90 and provided a new class choice.

thing is tho not everyone is like that. some of us have attention spans and don't buy games for playground boasting rights.
we enjoy narrative. we want to play the hero. to have a "role".

its no coincidence both Bioware and ArenaNet are placing an renewed emphasis on narrative in SWTOR and GW2.

it was narrative that built the WarCraft brand. WC3 was one of the greatest storytelling games ever made and make no mistake it sold bucket loads purely off the back of the single player champaign (far, far more than ever even showed face on Battlenet). unfortunately Blizzard has been squandering that legacy and living off past glorys in that department for almost a decade.

You my friend need to take a step back and relax some with the nonsense you are sprouting, now what you are saying is pretty much that people are childish if they do not enjoy questing in a MMO as much as you? playground boasting rights? what? You dont even make sense now, I guess we are children for even daring to not love this game as much as we can.

So much text and so little of value, stop making things up, please.

[sleekit]

all i meant was many people who play these games do not do so they can use them as a means to gain kudos with their peer group.

the phase "playground boasting rights" is just a colloquialism (which means the same thing).

[Eroginous]

no. that is not how mmos are designed at all. all games have a design intent and this game happens to have one that is entirely at odds with the "rush to endgame", "why game/expansion put content in my way ?" mindset.

SWTOR is about "the journey" & "story". time and time and time again they have emphasised this point more than any other in relation to the nature of the game using various euphemistic language.

with that in mind if you then go out and buy SWTOR and "rush to end game" you understood nothing about the actual nature of the product you paid money for even though it was highly publicised in advance and thusly do not deserve to be listened to because basically you're a blithering idiot.

despite what some WoW players might think this is NOT a "one size fits all" market.

I think the concepts you are having trouble with are the terms 'optional' and 'options.'

Every game that's ever been made has boasted a set of options and optional content that give the player something to do beyond the basic scope of the game. One of the things that people never give Wow enough credit for is the magnitude of options and optional content that is offered in the game. Most people who've played wow would sum up the 1-85 leveling experience as a hefty grind while completely ignoring the plethora of options and the sheer flexibility of the task.

- 12 different starting zones, many of which are available to players who wish to deviate from the norm and try a starting zone that isn't typical of the race they chose.

- Numerous zones for each level bracket.

- Numerous methods of leveling. In addition to questing, you can level via BGs, dungeons, and even gathering professions.

In all reality, it's very rare that two wow players will experience leveling from 1-85 in the exact same way. On top of that, nothing is mandatory. You have complete freedom to choose how and where you want to level at within the confines of the game design. You can decide just how hard or easy you want the content to be, or how fast you want to go from 1-85. You have an achievements system and everything extra that comes along with that.

The game system that wow is built on is gigantic and nearly limitless in terms of the amount of time a player could spend. Where do you think Wow would be if they removed all these options? It would be shitty and I am sure players like you would be saying the same thing you've just said about SWTOR; 'if you're buying it for X reason and it was designed and intended to be played for Y reason, you're opinion is invalid and you're a blithering idiot.'

ppl who race to end game are not rpg players. they have not came into mmos form the rpg side. they see content as an obstacle. if they had their way hello panda adventure island sry Mists of Pandaria would a big button that simply levelled them to 90 and provided a new class choice.

If people are racing to end game, it's because there's some advantage to playing at the end game over any other part, likely due to content that only becomes available once you hit the level cap. Just because people are anxious and curious enough to get to the part of the game where they undertake more important tasks, ultimately fulfilling the intent of the game's content, doesn't mean they are somehow less of a player than people who bask in every second of the game prior to the level cap.

Historically, MMOs don't have much in the way of difficult or challenging content prior to the level cap, and it speaks volumes that activities which require the coordination and skill of a large group in order to be successful, would only be available once you reach max level.

thing is tho not everyone is like that. some of us have attention spans and don't buy games for playground boasting rights.
we enjoy narrative. we want to play the hero. to have a "role".

The thing about SWTOR is that the story you're talking about, your precious 'narrative' is basically the makings of a 'C movie' or a side story. It's essentially 8 different side stories from the extended star wars universe that have nothing to do with much of anything important, and can be largely written off as fluff. Is it interesting to see how a Sith goes from an apprentice to a lord? Probably not nearly as interesting or fun as it would be to see how a Sith Lord poses a vital threat to the nature of the Universe (think Darth Vader and the Emperor).

I agree with you that story is important to the RPG experience. But it's also important for the story to have meaning and power within the context of the game in question. When I sat down to play Tor during the beta, I wasn't pulled into the story very much with any of the classes I tried. I played through the starting zones and did as much of the class quests as I could to unlock the secondary class for those characters, and I have to say that I was all too often asking myself why the hell any of the stuff I was doing was important or meaningful.

In this game, your character isn't the hero. You don't save the galaxy. You're a peon in a pool of peons, and the story is how you go from being an unimportant peon to a semi important peon. For me, the game just doesn't have the impact or the luster that a good RPG has. Therefore, I would definitely be basing my enjoyment of the game on anything BUT the story.

[Investigator]

Historically, MMOs don't have much in the way of difficult or challenging content prior to the level cap, and it speaks volumes that activities which require the coordination and skill of a large group in order to be successful, would only be available once you reach max level.

The thing about SWTOR is that the story you're talking about, your precious 'narrative' is basically the makings of a 'C movie' or a side story. It's essentially 8 different side stories from the extended star wars universe that have nothing to do with much of anything important, and can be largely written off as fluff. Is it interesting to see how a Sith goes from an apprentice to a lord? Probably not nearly as interesting or fun as it would be to see how a Sith Lord poses a vital threat to the nature of the Universe (think Darth Vader and the Emperor).

I think it's all a matter of differing tastes. SWTOR makes the leveling experience more entertaining by making the questing more entertaining and immersive than in most other quest leveling based MMO's, which in my book is just as important as providing entertaining endgame content.

As for the metacritic figures, it should be obvious that SWTOR is a controversial game for various reasons, and because of that it'll draw the attention and hatred of themepark MMO haters, SWG vets and jaded burnt out MMO gamers who cannot enjoy MMO's currently anymore and need/crave for something wildly innovative for them to be able to enjoy MMO's again. Add to that the fans of other MMO's who feel threatened by SWTOR's arrival and there you have your explanation for quite a number of the extreme reviews and ratings on it.

[Miv]

IMO, it's a bunch of trolls. Some of the reviews that were up on the first day... ugh... yeah, definitely trolls. Metacritic is trash.

[morderith]

In this game, your character isn't the hero. You don't save the galaxy. You're a peon in a pool of peons, and the story is how you go from being an unimportant peon to a semi important peon. For me, the game just doesn't have the impact or the luster that a good RPG has. Therefore, I would definitely be basing my enjoyment of the game on anything BUT the story.

Just going to point this out here, but for the Jedi Knight story, you most definitly aren't a peon in a pool of peons. Not in the slightest. It takes a little bit of time to actually get to the point where you find out that its not just your progress as a typical jedi knight, and you do infact end up as a hero to the republic in a huge way, and are far ahead of what any other jedi accomplishes. I wouldn't go throwing out such large generalisations as you have without experiencing every story to its ending.

[Quaade]

Just going to point this out here, but for the Jedi Knight story, you most definitly aren't a peon in a pool of peons. Not in the slightest. It takes a little bit of time to actually get to the point where you find out that its not just your progress as a typical jedi knight, and you do infact end up as a hero to the republic in a huge way, and are far ahead of what any other jedi accomplishes. I wouldn't go throwing out such large generalisations as you have without experiencing every story to its ending.

You are a peon, because every other player is just as special as you are, they all have the same story they go trough, they all get told they are the hotshot talent, they all become the hero of the republic.
Just remember that in the end, when everyone is special, noone is.

In WoW it's:
So you saved Darkshore, that's cool, I kinda mucked things up in Westfall, not too proud of that, BUT I did make it awesome in Redridge.

The human warrior can go and start his tale in Teldrassil if he wants, as an RPG narrative he could he a war orphan adopted by a NE hero or someone who's stranded there in a storm and now have to start his life over again, ala the old novels/tv show Shogun.
You can't do that in TOR, every trooper will have been trough Ord Mantell, every Jedi will have been trough Tython, you can't pick and mix anything since there is a strict levelorder your toons have to go trough the planets in order to progress their own class story.

[Drofdel]

I'm sure a good chunk of them are WoW fanboys, with the other portion consisting of trolls. Metacritic is shit anyways; I take no stock in it whatsoever.

[Quaade]

SWTOR is about "the journey" & "story". time and time and time again they have emphasised this point more than any other in relation to the nature of the game using various euphemistic language.
.

And the journey is poor, constricted and very much on rails. The way they tell the story is amateurish at best. Most of your reasons for killing the same reskinned/renamed mobs over and over again in each zone is given as "Hi hero, I'm trained to do this, but the idiot bomb just exploded in my hands, will you please do it for me?"

Have you done the Darrowshire quests in WoW, either original or Cataclysm?
It starts off with "Please, I haven't heard anything from my brother and his daughter in a long time, will you go there and check up on them?" You do so, and when you get there you find the ghost of a girl who's alone, afraid, missing her father and doesn't realise she's dead, and you just want to help this poor creature who didn't ask nor could do anything about the fate she had recieved.

That questline was like an emotional punch to the heart and none of the quests in TOR so far, up to lvl 41 by now, have given me even a 10th of emotional interest in helping people with shit they really should be able to handle on their own.

Sure, there might be voice acting, and cutscenes and facial animations and it's all empty and for nothing, because they don't show you why you should care, they tell you.

TOR: Hi, I have this worried look on my phase, either that or I am constipated I can't quite tell, please help me!
WoW: A little ghost girl, asking for her daddy, sitting in a burnt out wreck of a house, too afraid to leave it to even get the doll that she sought comfort in when she was alive

This is storytelling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMMa60czDHo

This is visual storytelling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYg4L...eature=related

It's the same story, the first one is meh because there are images and the storyteller has a horrible flat voice, doesn't entone or emphasise anything or even try to become the characters he's reading, the second works because it -SHOWS- us in detail why we should feel sorry for the little girl.

[vep]

1) Metacritic is dump

2) Most of the reviewers are paid by Blizzard-Activision

Lol, you must be one of those who believe the landing on the moon is a conspiracy.

[Investigator]

And the journey is poor, constricted and very much on rails. The way they tell the story is amateurish at best. Most of your reasons for killing the same reskinned/renamed mobs over and over again in each zone is given as "Hi hero, I'm trained to do this, but the idiot bomb just exploded in my hands, will you please do it for me?"

Have you done the Darrowshire quests in WoW, either original or Cataclysm?
It starts off with "Please, I haven't heard anything from my brother and his daughter in a long time, will you go there and check up on them?" You do so, and when you get there you find the ghost of a girl who's alone, afraid, missing her father and doesn't realise she's dead, and you just want to help this poor creature who didn't ask nor could do anything about the fate she had recieved.

That questline was like an emotional punch to the heart and none of the quests in TOR so far, up to lvl 41 by now, have given me even a 10th of emotional interest in helping people with shit they really should be able to handle on their own.

Sure, there might be voice acting, and cutscenes and facial animations and it's all empty and for nothing, because they don't show you why you should care, they tell you.

TOR: Hi, I have this worried look on my phase, either that or I am constipated I can't quite tell, please help me!
WoW: A little ghost girl, asking for her daddy, sitting in a burnt out wreck of a house, too afraid to leave it to even get the doll that she sought comfort in when she was alive

This is storytelling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMMa60czDHo

This is visual storytelling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYg4L...eature=related

It's the same story, the first one is meh because there are images and the storyteller has a horrible flat voice, doesn't entone or emphasise anything or even try to become the characters he's reading, the second works because it -SHOWS- us in detail why we should feel sorry for the little girl.

I call bullshit. Or at least difference of opinion and taste. It's nice to compare storytelling in MMO's with storytelling in books or animation movies, but in my book storytelling in MMO's done by VO, cutscenes and choices in your dialogues that can have a smaller or larger impact, beats the traditional textbased storytelling in questing as seen in current MMO's any time, especially when it's done on the level of a Bioware.

So yes, questing in SWTOR as a whole is more immersive and entertaining than questing in other MMO's like LotrO, Rift, Aion and also WoW (although it did have fun quest lines as well) with a better delivery and providing of context. But hey, YMMV.
Plus I guess that for people who're determined to hate/dislike SWTOR nothing in the game is good enough or as good as their bias MMO.

[detectivekr]

A person can watch a movie and understand that it has good directing, good acting, and good costumes, but still dislike the movie. I thought the Godfather was a well made movie, but I was not entertained by it at all. Does that mean the Godfather is a bad movie? No, not at all. It simply means I didn't like the movie, despite its qualities. Do you see the distinction? My dislike for the movie does not make it a bad movie.

So what should a score reflect? Should I gave the Godfather a 9 because I think it's well made, or should I give it a 1 because I was bored? Which score is more valuable?

It's the same distinction between editorial and user scores in Metacritic. Most editorial reviews judge the game on the former (its actual merits and quality), while most users judge the game on how they feel about it. So you're going to see a lot of user 10s because they had the time of their life, and a lot of user 1s because they were bored, or never played it and just hate the competition. Point is, if you go by user scores, you're doing the same thing as listening to a friend on what movie to watch. If I did that, I'd be watching the Godfather every weekend, because all of my friends love it. Stick to the editorial reviews, get a sense for the quality of the game (or movie), and if you think it's worth it, try it. That's all that matters. Godfather is well reviewed by critics, I gave it a shot, I didn't like it. SWTOR is getting good reviews from critics, give it a shot. You might or might not like it. That's all Metacritic can tell you.

[Deleted]

2) Most of the reviewers are
a) paid by Blizzard-Activision or
b) have no idea what they are talking about

Because you even assume there could be answer a considering the scores there, you automagically will be put in group b.


But i think its mainly trolls and fanboys who make up the score.

[Quaade]

I call bullshit. Or at least difference of opinion and taste. It's nice to compare storytelling in MMO's with storytelling in books or animation movies, but in my book storytelling in MMO's done by VO, cutscenes and choices in your dialogues that can have a smaller or larger impact, beats the traditional textbased storytelling in questing as seen in current MMO's any time, especially when it's done on the level of a Bioware.

So yes, questing in SWTOR as a whole is more immersive and entertaining than questing in other MMO's like LotrO, Rift, Aion and also WoW (although it did have fun quest lines as well) with a better delivery and providing of context. But hey, YMMV.
Plus I guess that for people who're determined to hate/dislike SWTOR nothing in the game is good enough or as good as their bias MMO.

Not really, I equate to having a conversation or other relation with a person. You listen to aproximatly 20% of what they say, the remaining 80% is what they do, what they show you, their body language and their actions.

If your girlfriend tells you over and over again that she loves you so deeply yet never let you touch her in any way and don't really want to spend time with you, do you believe her love to be real despite how sincere she sounds?

It's the same in MMO's, our main interaction is not with the npcs that gives us quests, it's with the gameworld, the quest npcs are merely it's voice, they are what tells us what is wrong, what needs fixing and what an impact we have had when we do so.

And that's exactly my point, TOR does a great big job of telling us what is wrong, what needs fixing and the impact we have done. It never actually shows us any of these things.

When I came to Quesh I wouldn't had known it was a toxic deathworld just from looking at it, I knew it because I've at that point had no less than 4 npc's hammering it into my skull. Nothing on the planet showed it was a place unfit for human life, it just looked like any other jungle planet, a little worse for wear but nothing catastrophic.
When I came to Duskwood I knew things here were really really bad from the moment I crossed the bridge because the light dimmed, it was foggy and the entire ambience of the place was very oppresive. What I didn't know was what was causing it, speaking to the NPCs then revealed the cause and that it was even worse than it looked.

And it's like that in all of the zones in TOR, nothing in the environment or ambience tells the story of the place or shows it feel, you need NPCs to tell it to you. Tatooine and Hoth are possibly the exceptions, but that's not due to anything BW has done, those two planets allready had a "feel" and environment laid out for it from the word go due to the movies. In fact some of the things BW has added to Tatooine feels horribly out of place in a desert planet, the small walled cities, when there are larger communities of the dug down towns.

[Investigator]

Sorry, but that's just your personal perception, but hey, go with your personal subjective perception all you like, as long as you realise that other people don't look at things like you do.

Me, personally, I have my own 'Duskwood' moments in SWTOR, just like I had in other MMO's besides WoW (snowy mountains in AoC's Cimmeria with the hauntingly beautiful music there gave off enough of an atmosphere and context to make me feel as if it was really Cimmeria I was wandering around in, a harsh and brutal but also beautiful land, or a smear of blood on the floor that went down to underground chambers with half a body lying around told enough of a foreboding of what happened to the missing guards).

However, I was talking about quest delivery and storytelling and sorry to say, but imo SWTOR does that better than traditional questing in MMO's, WoW included.

[Deleted]

so if someone like me played it and didn't enjoyed it, he must be a troll or hater...

[brirrspliff]

Most of the reviewers are a) paid by Blizzard-Activision or b) have no idea what they are talking about

haha, "sure". conspiracy alarm! *still laughing*