Lack of locality immersion?

[LonestarHero]

During my SWTOR break I got into the ME series and KOTOR.

In both of those games whenever I went to a new quest hub (planet), I felt immersed in the locality I was in because it seemed like every NPC I encountered had a story to them. As I talked to folk, I also explored the area. Within ten minutes I felt like a citizen of The Citadel, Omega, Tatooine, Taris, or Ilum.

Sure in SWTOR there is a class story, but other than collecting quests I don't really feel immersed at all in the locality I'm in. The voice acting and video for every quest doesn't give me a feel for the culture or day to day lives of inhabitants. There really isn't much exploration going on because most hubs could fit within a couple football pitches.

Granted in ME and KOTOR there was a maximum of one quest hub on every planet and it is assumed players would explore and smell the roses.

The nature of MMO's is to get to max level as soon as possible. With each planet having 3-5 quest hubs perhaps it would have been a waste of resources to give each quest hub a character of its own.

Thoughts?

[Lathais]

Well, there is class story missions, planet story missions and side quests. Sounds to me like you are missing or space baring the Planet Story Mission cause each planet there is in fact a complete story. You get introduced to and work for a few key players on each planet. The side quests also give you a feel for the day to day lives of people. A side quest that sticks out is one where you have to go fix a water purifier or people will die. When you get there, you find out some kids need it to stay broken or they will have no water and home. Pretty good insight into the day-to-day lives. There are quite a few others that stick out, so perhaps YOUR nature is to get to max level ASAP and you are not paying attention?

Also, you mentioned planet sizes, and while they are on rails, most are much larger than a few football pitches. Let's see you get across Hoth in a few throws of a ball. Also on the exploration side, have you found every datacron on every planet you have been to? There's more exploring for you them, unless of course you decide to just look up the locations and go straight to them. In that case, don't complain about lack of exploration, you ruined it for yourself.

Thoughts? You are wrong on almost all points.

[LonestarHero]

Well, there is class story missions, planet story missions and side quests. Sounds to me like you are missing or space baring the Planet Story Mission cause each planet there is in fact a complete story. You get introduced to and work for a few key players on each planet. The side quests also give you a feel for the day to day lives of people. A side quest that sticks out is one where you have to go fix a water purifier or people will die. When you get there, you find out some kids need it to stay broken or they will have no water and home. Pretty good insight into the day-to-day lives. There are quite a few others that stick out, so perhaps YOUR nature is to get to max level ASAP and you are not paying attention?


Also, you mentioned planet sizes, and while they are on rails, most are much larger than a few football pitches. Let's see you get across Hoth in a few throws of a ball. Also on the exploration side, have you found every datacron on every planet you have been to? There's more exploring for you them, unless of course you decide to just look up the locations and go straight to them. In that case, don't complain about lack of exploration, you ruined it for yourself.

Thoughts? You are wrong on almost all points.

I said the quest hubs were small, not the planets themselves. I do tend to do all the planet missions and side quests minus the bonus series. If I do not I find I am under-leveled for the big end of chapter battles.

[Dreary]

No you're right there's no details. Most NPCs stand frozen in place and are unclickable, there's barely any ambient sounds or conversations, the few critters there are don't move but just sit there as if they're painted into the landscape. Same with most of the mobs, they just stand there waiting for you to kill them.

Gotta admit I expected more from a modern MMO, especially when WoW had this stuff like 8 years ago.

[Forsedar]

No you're right there's no details. Most NPCs stand frozen in place and are unclickable, there's barely any ambient sounds or conversations, the few critters there are don't move but just sit there as if they're painted into the landscape. Same with most of the mobs, they just stand there waiting for you to kill them.

Gotta admit I expected more from a modern MMO, especially when WoW had this stuff like 8 years ago.

You mean *every MMO to date including the next couple MMOs being release?

I don't really get immersed into the areas I travel in throughout TOR, BUT I do get immersed in my story line which WoW could not do for me.

I mean, I got all giddy when I became 'Champion of the Great Hunt' even though tons of other people would have it. I still felt special.

[LonestarHero]

No you're right there's no details. Most NPCs stand frozen in place and are unclickable, there's barely any ambient sounds or conversations, the few critters there are don't move but just sit there as if they're painted into the landscape. Same with most of the mobs, they just stand there waiting for you to kill them.

Gotta admit I expected more from a modern MMO, especially when WoW had this stuff like 8 years ago.

Actually I expect more out of a Bioware title in that regard because they are masters of locality immersion as seen in Mass Effect, KOTOR and Dragon Age.

In WoW and RIFT I never gave a rats ass about the outpost/small town quest hubs either. Bioware made the quest hubs matter in the titles I named above.

[Darsithis]

There is a lot more to it than just the main story line. I've run through a number of areas where I've stopped to do each quest because I got really interested in the people. Sometimes it was the main story quests, sometimes it was side stuff like The Infinite Machine.

I haven't yet been anywhere where I didn't really feel like I wasn't there and the people felt different.

[Leonard McCoy]

No you're right there's no details. Most NPCs stand frozen in place and are unclickable, there's barely any ambient sounds or conversations, the few critters there are don't move but just sit there as if they're painted into the landscape. Same with most of the mobs, they just stand there waiting for you to kill them.

Gotta admit I expected more from a modern MMO, especially when WoW had this stuff like 8 years ago.

BS. I'm tired of your framing this. Walking through a town in warcraft for example I hear nothing except for when I click on mobs. In the fleet theirs announcements about the events going on, in the towns the npcs have conversations with one and other and it's usually fairly humorous or involving. Even outside of hutta, theirs a fucking mob war going outside with all the npcs.

[Dezerte]

I also feel the game lacks immersion.

I was a bit dissapointed by this, I expected more from BioWare when you keep in mind they've made some amazing immersive games in the past. But I suppose making an MMO made the quality suffer in order to have enough content in the game.

[Moriarty]

I don't really see where SWTOR lacks any immersion that their previous games had. If you really stick around, you do hear snippets of conversation from the NPCs. For example, you hear conversations from imperial soldiers about the Evocii ("How can you help but enslave these creatures? They're pathetic"). On Tatooine, there's a conversation about some poor guy who is using too much of his water rations and he's arguing for hygiene. Pretty funny. Sometimes you see hostile mobs running around and fighting each other. Your companions make comments on the different planets as you walk through them like the dragon age games had. Mako in particular for the Bounty Hunter seems to give a lot of useful information on landmarks. Oh and here's a fun one for the current world event: If you walk into a spaceport or try to board your ship while infected, you'll be scanned by a containment probe and be attacked by NPCs trying to neutralize the plague.

The only thing is that you can't click on all the NPCs, but I never really saw the great appeal of clicking on an NPC to get a stock one-liner anyway. You sort of get that just through the ambient conversation in the background.

I wonder if you guys turned off sound effects or turned off a certain part of your sounds that you're not hearing this.

[Thornstar]

Immersion is happening all around in SW:TOR. Like someone else has mentioned the announcements in fleet. Illum is another good example of the immersion they go to. They drop the new tank spawns with ships. Where as in other MMO's they just respawn. NPC's are sometimes in wars fighting, they have conversations when you walk by. Your companion talks to you about the area your going into. Class story as well is amazing. Anyone who even attempts to compare the Immersion of WoW/other MMO's to TOR is doing so with rose colored glasses. Frankly the immersion of TOR is amazing for an MMO, and it is obvious to see in every corner.

[LonestarHero]

Immersion is happening all around in SW:TOR. Like someone else has mentioned the announcements in fleet. Illum is another good example of the immersion they go to. They drop the new tank spawns with ships. Where as in other MMO's they just respawn. NPC's are sometimes in wars fighting, they have conversations when you walk by. Your companion talks to you about the area your going into. Class story as well is amazing. Anyone who even attempts to compare the Immersion of WoW/other MMO's to TOR is doing so with rose colored glasses. Frankly the immersion of TOR is amazing for an MMO, and it is obvious to see in every corner.

I never compared it to WoW, I compared it to other Bioware titles.

[Rhonen]

More clickable NPCs with static one-liners means wasted resources imo. As far as I'm concerned, space baring is the only way you can limit the amount of readily available storyline details.

In summary: I disagree.

[Forsedar]

More clickable NPCs with static one-liners means wasted resources imo. As far as I'm concerned, space baring is the only way you can limit the amount of readily available storyline details.

In summary: I disagree.

To be fair, you compared it to other Bioware titles which solely focus on the story line and immersion. This is an MMO so all of their resources can't be focused on that.

[madmaxtrox]

I do find the imersion higher in the starting areas (voice acting / npc animations) then in the big cities. I quess the development time to add all that is significant but I don't know. I would love to have it though.

[Dreary]

BS. I'm tired of your framing this. Walking through a town in warcraft for example I hear nothing except for when I click on mobs. In the fleet theirs announcements about the events going on, in the towns the npcs have conversations with one and other and it's usually fairly humorous or involving. Even outside of hutta, theirs a fucking mob war going outside with all the npcs.

What about all the times (in WoW) you'll be at a mine or something and the commander mob is shouting at the mining mobs to "Hurry it up! We've gotto get the shipment ready in time for blah blah..."..

That is an effort at making the mobs more immersive that SWTOR doesn't have anywhere. There are no patrolling mobs in SWTOR like there are in WoW. And the fight outside hutta is half-assed - if you kill the mobs they're shooting at the NPCs just keep shooting at thin air. That's not how it works in WoW at all, the technology there is alot better and more immersive, even though its much older.

There's ambient sounds everywhere in WoW, birds chirping, waterfalls, etc. None of that in SWTOR. And you didn't even mention the part about the wildlife (because SWTOR barely has any and the few it does have are completely stationary). Not to mention swimming, sitting in chairs, all these little details that on their own mean nothing but taken together make WoW much more immersive than SWTOR. There's barely even any music in SWTOR (compared to WoW where it plays nonstop)...

Take a look at these videos, take a look at how static and dead everything is:
NPCs stand frozen in unnatural poses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Rrk6lgi24 How is this immersive?
This one especially says it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_hqGsnpp8



Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIsdl4BL2Q
Where do you see this sort of thing in WoW, and why do you excuse it in a modern MMO? You're telling me the devs couldn't take 2 minutes to create unique NPCs? Even the guards in WoW have unique faces.

Anyone who even attempts to compare the Immersion of WoW/other MMO's to TOR

I just did.

And lastly, how come its always daytime? And why do all the planets look EXACTLY LIKE EARTH??? It's either a desert, an oak forest, or snow. This is supposed to be space, where are the alien trees? Where are the electric clouds? the Burning Crusade has more imaginative alien-like features than SWTOR and that was 5 years ago!

[Forsedar]

There's barely even any music in SWTOR...

I stopped taking you seriously after that post. You do realize SWTOR has probably the best musical composition out of any game, right? Maybe you shut off the music when you played. I have no idea how you can even remotely say that TOR has barely any music in it.

All of your other points are moot as well. You say that WoW has NPCs who say things, but guess what: Every one of those caves has NPCs shouting the same things. I guess you haven't played TOR much (aside from your music comment) because every where I go there are NPCs talking to each other. Hell, the past week in fleet there are news announcements everywhere because of the plague that is spreading across tatooine. Not to mention the guards on Ilum talking about killing republic. Everywhere I go there is immersion. When I walk by imperial guards on my sith pureblood, they actually kneel as I walk by because of my status.

Please stop making such bland silly statements.

[Dreary]

I stopped taking you seriously after that post. You do realize SWTOR has probably the best musical composition out of any game, right? Maybe you shut off the music when you played. I have no idea how you can even remotely say that TOR has barely any music in it.

All of your other points are moot as well. You say that WoW has NPCs who say things, but guess what: Every one of those caves has NPCs shouting the same things. I guess you haven't played TOR much (aside from your music comment) because every where I go there are NPCs talking to each other. Hell, the past week in fleet there are news announcements everywhere because of the plague that is spreading across tatooine. Not to mention the guards on Ilum talking about killing republic. Everywhere I go there is immersion. When I walk by imperial guards on my sith pureblood, they actually kneel as I walk by because of my status.

Please stop making such bland silly statements.

You can't play the music on cycle, which is how I usually play WoW. So to me, SWTOR has minimal music and is silent when I'm walking from place to place (which is more often than when I'm fighting).

And you can't claim my points are "moot" while addressing only one of them. For the most part the mobs in SWTOR just stand there waiting for you to kill them. So what if the NPCs in cities have conversations? I haven't seen any mobs that do, and thats more important to me than non-clickable NPCs.

[Forsedar]

You can't play the music on cycle, which is how I usually play WoW. So to me, SWTOR has minimal music and is silent when I'm walking from place to place (which is more often than when I'm fighting).

And you can't claim my points are "moot" while addressing only one of them. For the most part the mobs in SWTOR just stand there waiting for you to kill them. So what if the NPCs in cities have conversations? I haven't seen any mobs that do, and thats more important to me than non-clickable NPCs.

I see mobs that pat a lot. I don't care to hear what the mobs I'm killing are saying. The vast majority of them can't even speak basic.

[Dreary]

I see mobs that pat a lot. I don't care to hear what the mobs I'm killing are saying. The vast majority of them can't even speak basic.

There are some. But usually you'll have like 1-2 mobs patrolling while most of them are just standing around looking awkward, or sitting down staring off into space, even when you're nearby.

All I'm saying is that after playing WoW for years (and I hate what WoW has become), I expected more from an MMO that takes so much from it design-wise. Polish like this is the sort of thing that you add last in development, and its very apparent from the bugs and all that SWTOR was released prematurely.