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

[Arlee]

What stops them from making a non-linear story? For example:
You need to do X. To do it, you need to either go to Y and rescue Z, or go to A and retreive B?

A Choose your own adventure mmo! That would be so crazy!

O RLY? Did you visit Taris by any chance? Over 9000 rakghoul variations want to say hi.

Actually I went to Taris and only did the class quests... so your point is kind of invalid because you can do various things to level you don't *have* to grind out killing mobs over and over to level.

[Hurko]

To avoid spoilers I will be a little vague, but you will understand:

In the Operative story, at the end of Chapter one, you can (a) kill the bad guy or (b) side with the bad guy. I chose (a) and a guildie chose (b). He got a different title, and every single class quest after that one, he was talking to different people in the agency. Promotions for NPCs within Imperial Intelligence were different. The stories diverged a lot, which was surprising to me. Yes, certain elements of the story were the same, which cannot be avoided, but a lot of them differed greatly.

People who call this game Linear are just forgetting that each planet in SWTOR = 1 zone in other games. It's like saying "Mulgore is linear".

[Deleted]

O RLY? Did you visit Taris by any chance? Over 9000 rakghoul variations want to say hi.

I was talking about Korean MMOs where you literally have to kill an infinite amount of the same mobs to reach the next level without quests or anything else...... but okay?

[Beavis]

Well the first thing that comes to mind is GW2.

*hides in a corner to avoid angry looks*

It is going to be so hilarious when GW2 comes out and it fails to meet messianic expectations.

[Guyviroth]

People who say it's linear are not talking about the story or the questing. They're talking about the map of the worlds themselves. All of them are glorified or cleverly disguised hallways

[Beavis]

People who say it's linear are not talking about the story or the questing. They're talking about the map of the worlds themselves. All of them are glorified or cleverly disguised hallways

Yup, those look like hallways to me.

[ZeroEdgeir]

For those that complained....

It was marketted as a STORY-DRIVEN MMO... you knew what you were getting in to. You got nobody to blame but yourself.

[Cairhiin]

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.

You actually made it out of Coruscant or are you just exaggerating to make a point? There's plenty of planets that aren't hallways.

[Deleted]

People who say it's linear are not talking about the story or the questing. They're talking about the map of the worlds themselves. All of them are glorified or cleverly disguised hallways

Nar Shadaa and Coruscant aside, I really don't see this. Most of the worlds are very open (Hoth, Correlia, Belsavis, Tatooine, Taris, etc...) and gave me the same feeling I would get out of a zone in another MMO.

Unless you were expecting every world to be an Azeroth (which is simply impossible to do), what is so wrong with the way they were done right now?

[notorious98]

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.

Pick a new server. There are quite a few that are jumping. As far as anything else goes, this game has MUCH more of an MMO vibe from it than WoW. WoW completely disintegrated their group quests for a very single player-type leveling experience. TOR has World bosses, Champions, heroic 2+ to 4 quests, Flashpoints, Social vendors, increased XP and loot from grouping, etc. This game ENCOURAGES a social atmosphere much more than many other MMOs.

[Beavis]

Nar Shadaa and Coruscant aside, I really don't see this. Most of the worlds are very open (Hoth, Correlia, Belsavis, Tatooine, Taris, etc...) and gave me the same feeling I would get out of a zone in another MMO.

Unless you were expecting every world to be an Azeroth (which is simply impossible to do), what is so wrong with the way they were done right now?

Nothing's wrong with it. Some people just can't live with the idea that other people like something they don't. Something MUST be wrong with it so they grasp at silly crap and delude themselves into believing incomprehensible nonsense. There's nothing wrong with SWTOR aside from the technical issues that effect some people. It's just early in development and that isn't everyone's cup of tea.

[Guyviroth]

Yup, those look like hallways to me.

Bravo, you pointed out two maps. Out of how many in the game?

[Kaesebrezen]

Yup, those look like hallways to me.

I painted the hallways. For the "note": Here you have the option to wait for up to 40 minutes for a ballon to reach the 2 datachrons in the zone. Yay.

Only because the zone looks open, doesn't mean it's not linear. There is NOTHING to do outside of your questpath. 0, nada, nothing. Don't bother with it.

[Beavis]

Bravo, you pointed out two maps. Out of how many in the game?

[notorious98]

I am sorry, GW2 is not even released yet. Not even open beta is out. How i could compare? What exactly is the reward in there for exploring?


Have you been playing wow since the release? there were 2 paths of leveling because they had split territories in half. And everyone have been herded into the same territories in the end. Now lets take vanilla -when all this was designed. Half of lv55-60 regions were wastelands without any quests i.e. Silithus, Un Goro was, basically, the must for everyone, because quests in cauldron were too high after badlands and then you needed to get to other continent find this blasted place. Blasted lands were barren - no quests basicaly, swamp of sorrow -the same. 3 quests for horde 1 for alliance YEY and don't let me start on Azshara.... Some of them had been designed so poorly that people avoided them like plague, so in the end you did not have very a lot of choice where to quest. You had 2 paths up till lv 30-35 and then mostly herded into the same route - unless you were very masochistic. The expansions were even worse - all of them same route for everyone(that's what you get when Bliz upgrades hardware). The only reason they had 2 different start zones were to avoid breakdowns on the release when gazilion of players besiege the starting zones all at the same time. Vanila leveling zone split was done for the same reason - the hardware at those times did not allow you to put a lot of players in same places(if anyone tried to log in on silithus opening event you can remember the fun of what happens when lots of people gets to a single region - disaster). You would be horribly mistaken if you would think Blizzard done this for any other reason...

May as well not leave out Eastern Plaguelands in that. Not much as far as questing there either. Same with Winterspring. But Infighter is right, after your 1st alt, WoW is the same boring level grind as anything else with the same quests you've already done.

"Hey, a new quest I didn't get on my first toon. Same 10 bear meats though." Yep, way different.

[Beavis]

I painted the hallways. For the "note": Here you have the option to wait for up to 40 minutes for a ballon to reach the 2 datachrons in the zone. Yay.

Ah, so it isn't enough that the world is open. You want to literally go wherever you want. Go play Skyrim or GTA.

[Cairhiin]

Story and Linear go hand in hand. You can't have story without a linear progression.

This is very true. It is near impossible to create a game that revolves around a strong story and at the same time has a non-linear progression. I personally think that it really depends on the person; some like this story-driven linear gameplay, while others prefer more dynamic and free flowing gameplay. I like both as they both can be very well done. For instance, WoW gameplay pre Cataclysm was very organic non linear gameplay which was very enjoyable.

[Koalachan]

could you maybe provide coords? because I have no clue what two hubs you mean. There are indeed two hubs, mandalorian camp and the other, northeast from the first hub beyond the vastes, but those are connected to bonus series.

alderaan has also two hubs + one half-hub, but those are also connected to bonus series.

As I said, I have not found a single hub, that wasnt connected to main or bonus series storylines.

edit: when I was doing Taris for the first time and got to the east camp on the main storyline, I saw a new FP even ore to the east and find a hub and was like "cool, finally quest hub that has to be found through exploring, not breadcrumbs" and did all the few quests there, only to find out few levels later there is a bonus series and i had to do the most eastern part twice...

Ah, but now you just brought up a seperate issue. Bonus series. They're bonus, not main. You don't have to do them, many people skip them, many people do them. That by definition breaks the linearity of the questing.

[Deleted]

I painted the hallways. For the "note": Here you have the option to wait for up to 40 minutes for a ballon to reach the 2 datachrons in the zone. Yay.

Only because the zone looks open, doesn't mean it's not linear. There is NOTHING to do outside of your questpath. 0, nada, nothing. Don't bother with it.

I think you entered a conversation without understand its point. Guyviroth said that the problem are not the quests, but the worlds being "hallways" and he was corrected into saying that no world aside from 2 is actually a hallway, but are very open. Now you come in and say that the zone is a hallway anyway because of the way the quests flow...?



As I said before, every other game RIGHT NOW is made like that, it's a way to make the questing faster. Having all the quests everywhere in the map with the quest mobs being in the other half of the map makes leveling tedious and annoying.

[Grissym]

One thing I would like to see, but is probably much more in depth than the thought itself, is sort of "recycling" NPCs and stories. The best example I can think of is Skyrim. And before someone replies, "blah blah skyrim is not an MMO!", I understand. But what I mean is that things you say and decisions you make are crafted into things that occur later on and for the entirety of that game file. You kill someone, they're not coming back; it might also make certain people hate you. Maybe much later on in your game you'll have assassins come after you(had this happen). Maybe you piss off a merchant and he hires bodyguards to attack you next time you enter his shop.

Something to that extent in game. Like for Empire on Dromuund Kaas. The merc near the beginning that you cutoff from leaving the planet. You help him either way regardless. Maybe bring him back into the game later on, he comes to you for more assistance.

It would be more phased content, as each person would carve their own story, but I feel it would make the world feel more alive if people you spared, or kill, have some sort of prolonging impact on your in-game experience.