To everyone who complains about the game being too linear...

[Unfurth]

I have seen this complaint too often and I would like these pompous game critics to enlighten me. How would you make the game non linear when the whole leveling experience is based around the class story. Yes other games have offered more choices in the leveling path but none of them to my knowledge had even a fraction of the personal story swtor has.

The most common comparison is to WoW and having spent more of my life playing that game than I want to admit, I found it refreshing to have the class stories central to the leveling experience. If you can't stand the linear constraints of the storyline, please do us all a favor and just stop posting because it is integral to the game and likely won't ever change.

[Koalachan]

I don't mind the linearity of the story. A book has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's how a story works. Although I do think that the could stand to be more xp gains from pvp, space missions and other such to make them a little more competitive.

[Deleted]

Story being linear shows some consistency in the story even if people complain that it being repetitive, at the end of the day the story makes sense.

[mace16]

By making the worlds actual worlds and not glorified hallways.

[Coombs]

Excellent stories are completely linear with clear and coherent dialogue. Bad story is the illusion of options that have meaningless consequences in the macro story. That is how every bioware game is. The "Ohh I chose to kill that random person making it my game" doesn't create in depth story as much as epic dialogue does. You can't make epic dialogue and story when you have to write fifteen versions to ever single interaction. It just becomes tedious.

[Sarevokcz]

so what is wrong with wanting some branching of storylines? If I let the senator die in the explosion, I would expect some sort of fallout and ministory associated with it. If I chose to save the former traitor over catching the bad guy, I expect the story with him is not over and if I find out one of my companions betrayed me to my arch enemy, I want to cut his head off, not brush it aside

[Beavis]

By making the worlds actual worlds and not glorified hallways.

Yeah, every single planet in the game should be as detailed as Azeroth.

[mace16]

Yeah, every single planet in the game should be as detailed as Azeroth.

Didn't say they weren't detailed(their not btw) just that every planets a hallway where you follow a single path from point A to point B with no detour, you also do this on a designated road.

[Unfurth]

Didn't say they weren't detailed(their not btw) just that every planets a hallway where you follow a single path from point A to point B with no detour, you also do this on a designated road.

Your hyperbole is one of the biggest problems with most posters. There is plenty of opportunity for branching, just because there are breadcrumb quests leading you from hub to hub (just lik other games btw) does not mean you have to do them in order. The only quest series that is rigidly locked in sequence is the class questline for obvious reasons.

Don't like quests at one hub, move to the next. The worlds are all plenty detailed and each I think gives the proper feel for its area (Nar Sha = dark corridors, shady areas in general, Tat = bright desert, etc.

Instead of useless exaggeration maybe try detailed examples.

[Koalachan]

Didn't say they weren't detailed(their not btw) just that every planets a hallway where you follow a single path from point A to point B with no detour, you also do this on a designated road.

A lot of the planets have hubs that are not along the breadcrumb trail. Tatooine for instance.

[Arlee]

A lot of the planets have hubs that are not along the breadcrumb trail. Tatooine for instance.

This is certainly true... really the only things that you have to do in a specific order are the class quests. Aside from those you can go to different planets and do different quests as you want.

[Jalek]

There are also way more quests than you really need to level up. My first time throught I pretty much skipped Tatooine except for class quests after spending too much time on narshadaa, the second time through I did the opposite. Makes it feel a lot more varied.

[Valeron]

Personally I'd rather have had them ditch a lot of the side quests and make the main class stories have more branches. That way we could have had choices that actually change the whole course of the class story. Plus I think it would help with replay-ability.

[mafao]

I have seen this complaint too often and I would like these pompous game critics to enlighten me. How would you make the game non linear when the whole leveling experience is based around the class story. Yes other games have offered more choices in the leveling path but none of them to my knowledge had even a fraction of the personal story swtor has.

The most common comparison is to WoW and having spent more of my life playing that game than I want to admit, I found it refreshing to have the class stories central to the leveling experience. If you can't stand the linear constraints of the storyline, please do us all a favor and just stop posting because it is integral to the game and likely won't ever change.

I have no problem with linear stories in games, well-told linear stories are great. However, you have to ask yourself: is a class story-based leveling experience actually a good thing for an MMO? I only purchased the game earlier today and played for about 5-6 hours. So far, I didn't have an impression of playing an MMO at all. Its just feels like a generic Bioware single-player RPG with some multiplayer add-ins.

I don't like WoW — it got old for me very quickly. WoW is an old game (it has basically no real innovation over dinosaurs like EverQuest, its just more player-friendly). But WoW plays and feels like a MMO to me. SWOTR does not. Now, I know, I didn't get anywhere far in the game yet, but already the fact that I have played 11 levels (which is 1/5 of the level cap AFIK) and haven't had a single player interaction yet makes me worry a bit... and I honestly don't see where SWOTR is supposed to have a gameplay-edge over WoW. Yes, the environments are much more detailed and the quests are voiced (although exactly as boring as WoW quests are), but the combat system is IMHO more awkward than in WoW, the abilities I got so far are very plain and that weird pet person running alongside me irritates me a bit. Dunno, maybe it will get better later.

I also have to say that I don't really enjoy the way how Bioware tells their newer games. What they actually did, starting with the Mass Effect series, is introducing grind to the actual storyline — which for me, is a horrible thing. You do get to make a lot of choices, but these choices are simply generic (choose what happens next) — they do not really affect your experience of the story. Its like they show you a building of lego castle and offer you to pick the color of the block or the shape of the tower now and then. It gets trivial very quickly. A great example where they really pushed it to the limits was Mass Effect 2, where you had to do companion quests to improve their disposition to you, which ultimately climaxed in a changed trivial cosmetic detail at the end of the game (like who cares??). All RPGs I played and really enjoyed (Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Vampires Bloodlines, KOTOR 1/2) had quests which you did because it was fun or because there was potentially a nice reward hidden in the end. You did that all from the sense of exploration. Which I have to say, Bioware games don't give me anymore, they just become to obsessed which the "choice" which really, isn't one at all.

[Unfurth]

Yes it would be interesting to see some of our choices have more of an impact on the game, but then it would be more of an RPG than an MMO. The point of the choices is to allow you to give your characters personality, give you a sense of who they are, which ifyou want, you can share with other in RP. How would you reconcile every person's choices and their impact on the universe you play in all while playing with others.

Blizzard tried that with phasing and I don't know about anyone else but that was more of an annoyance being in a different phase than your friends, breaking them up instead of bringing them together. To me, choices changing the game on a grand level belong in RPGs not MMOs.

[Vrachara]

I have seen this complaint too often and I would like these pompous game critics to enlighten me. How would you make the game non linear when the whole leveling experience is based around the class story. Yes other games have offered more choices in the leveling path but none of them to my knowledge had even a fraction of the personal story swtor has.

How about we flip this the other way - how would the story be negatively impacted by the world being open instead of linear? What is it that a linear world provides that can't be accomplished in the open world? Phasing? 99% of it is in buildings and caves, that doesn't justify a linear world, go explore WoW for a while, you'll find tons of caves and buildings, slap on a phasing wall in front of them and you get what you need for personal story.

[Landin55]

How about we flip this the other way - how would the story be negatively impacted by the world being open instead of linear? What is it that a linear world provides that can't be accomplished in the open world? Phasing? 99% of it is in buildings and caves, that doesn't justify a linear world, go explore WoW for a while, you'll find tons of caves and buildings, slap on a phasing wall in front of them and you get what you need for personal story.

Seems like someone didn't explore much in SWTOR.........There are a lot of little things like that, mostly buildings. Best example is Datacron hunting: Taris, Tatt, and Correllia are great for finding buildings and other nooks and crannies.

[Unfurth]

How about we flip this the other way - how would the story be negatively impacted by the world being open instead of linear? What is it that a linear world provides that can't be accomplished in the open world? Phasing? 99% of it is in buildings and caves, that doesn't justify a linear world, go explore WoW for a while, you'll find tons of caves and buildings, slap on a phasing wall in front of them and you get what you need for personal story.

So what you want either A: a full 10-50 leveling experience on each world, or quest rewards andover difficulty scaled to each individual playing, or what? You can go to Nar shadda as soon as you get your ship. Nobody is stopping you, just mob difficulty. Now I didn't want to mention this but back in vanilla wow you realty didn't have a iot of choice in what zones to level for the same reasons (mob level, distance to other starting zones you had to walk to since you didn't auto discover flight points)

[Koalachan]

So far, I didn't have an impression of playing an MMO at all. Its just feels like a generic Bioware single-player RPG with some multiplayer add-ins.

I don't like WoW — it got old for me very quickly. WoW is an old game (it has basically no real innovation over dinosaurs like EverQuest, its just more player-friendly). But WoW plays and feels like a MMO to me. SWOTR does not.

What exactly can they do to make it more MMOy for you? They give Heroic quests to do with party members, as soon as you get off your stater zone at level 10 you can do your first FP on your way to your second planet. Any time you party with people even doing regular quests you get bonus xp and better drop rates. You also build social points for playing with people in normal quest conversations that let you buy stuff from social vendors that save you the trouble of having to farm for those social points later, as is quite popular. But no, its single player.

[mafao]

What exactly can they do to make it more MMOy for you? They give Heroic quests to do with party members, as soon as you get off your stater zone at level 10 you can do your first FP on your way to your second planet. Any time you party with people even doing regular quests you get bonus xp and better drop rates. You also build social points for playing with people in normal quest conversations that let you buy stuff from social vendors that save you the trouble of having to farm for those social points later, as is quite popular. But no, its single player.

Well, for starters, it would be nice to actually see another player in the world... during 7 hours of playtime it happened exactly two times. Dunno, maybe my server is dead. As to heroic quests... I tried asking for a group for several minutes in the general chat with no response.