Lens on Legacy

So with a free week of game-time, I've gone back to "Star Wars: The Old Republic" for, oh, probably seven days.  Or less.

Our servers got merged, so I transferred my toons to their new homes.  Other than losing a few names, including "Lens" on both servers (i haz a sad), the process was quick and relatively painless.  It took them WAY too long to get it so that it was user controlled, rather than requiring BioWare to move them manually.  Seriously, how does that take 6 years of development and then 6 months of release?

Regardless, I'm back at it, for a while at least.  They've said there will be an HK companion that'll require a character on both sides on the same server, so I decided to start up a noob Sith on our Republic server.  Just in case I decide to hang around or come back at some point.

I also like, when returning to a game I've previously played, to start a new character to re-acquaint myself with the keys and game mechanics "from the beginning" as it were.  It also can help build up enthusiasm for hopping back to one of my higher level alts who are breathlessly awaiting my return.

Upon creating my new Sith character, one of the first things I did after rearranging my hotbars was to apply the self-buff...and had all 4 Imperial class buffs instantly applied.  Because I have each class past Act II of their storyline on the Republic side, my individual buff skills apply all of them due to...Legacy!

For those unaware, the SWTOR Legacy system is similar to what many games have for guilds, a "guild experience point/level system" where as the members of the guild accomplish various things, the guild itself levels up and gains abilities, buffs, and goodies that accrue to the whole guild.  But instead of "guild xp/level" it's more like "account xp/level" where it's the activity of alts that generate points/levels, and the rewards are account-wide (OK, on a per-server basis as well).

Today I'll be talking about SWTOR's Legacy system, the parts that work well, the parts that don't, why it is part-and-parcel of the games underwhelming success, and what other designers should learn (and steal) from it.

THE GAME DEFINING FEATURE...that wasn't.

TOR is obviously an extension of the "Knights of the Old Republic" (KOTOR) single-player RPGs, both of which were enormously successful.  Many of the game systems are pulled straight out of the single-player games with little change.  Some are just extensions of mechanics from the KOTOR games.  The designers obviously were guided by the KOTOR games in many ways.

One of the things they saw in the KOTOR games was, surprisingly for a single-player RPG, how many people replayed the damned things.  I played each game through to completion at least twice, and I almost never do that with any game, let alone an RPG.

"A-Ha!" they said, because that's what designers and developers say when they think they see something, "When we make the MMO version of this, people will roll alts and replay the game!  This can make for an awesome subscriber retention motivator!"

They continued, "We'll have this deep, involved system allowing those who have finished the content once to leverage that into their alts, allowing for enriched, extended gameplay and other supah-kool leetness!"

The intent was clear, a reciprocal reinforcement:  Legacy drives alt replay, alt replay increases the value of Legacy.

And then they shipped "Star Wars: The Old Republic" to trumpets, harps, and choirs of angels...but no Legacy system.

So people played for 3 months, capped a character or maybe two, got bored and left.

To paraphrase Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", "Nice...leveraging."

NEXT TIME AT LEAST KISS ME BEFORE YOU **** ME

Because they hadn't finished the design at the time of launch, BioWare didn't really talk in any great detail about the Legacy system for quite a while.  They talked glowingly about the "coming soon" pile of awesome, but didn't really say much.

There was a lot of speculation in my guild about what might be involved.  I assumed, since there was a placeholder for the Legacy system on the skill tree display, that it would work similarly.  That you would level your legacy and get points to spend in the account-wide goodies.

BioWare had made it pretty clear that new races for characters would be involved, although whether that meant entirely new races or simply access to races not available by default for the appropriate faction/class wasn't known.  I'd guessed there'd be a "Racial Tree" where you could apply "Legacy Points" to open up different races for new character creation.

I had also said that as an example of the kind of thing you might be able to apply "Legacy points" to would be something like "increasing crit rates for companion crafting".  Yay me for being all prescient because that's in the second batch of Legacy goodies they came out with.

When the details of the Legacy system finally came out, my immediate reaction was one of venomous fury.

The "new racial options" required you to have finished Act III on a character (in essence, reached L50 level cap) to open up the race on that toon to all other characters to be created, regardless of faction or class.

And my L50 was a human...a race already available to all factions and classes.  And my next highest character, a L49 was also human.

Had they given us the details, I might very well have made a lot of MAJOR changes in the way I'd played the game.  I might have created my characters with different races, I might have created some of my Imperial characters on the same server with my Republic characters to leverage the features available.

Yes, I know that these various racial unlocks can be paid for with in-game credits, but that's really not the point.

One of the big rewards for playing a character to cap was negated because I made a choice in an information vacuum and felt screwed (sans lube) because of it.

I heard of LOT of "well if I'd known before..." from my guildies when the Legacy finally came out.

To paraphrase Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", "My Grandfather's Legacy was doo doo!"  Class...dismissed.

THE RIGHT STUFFS

There's a lot of good ideas and good implementations in the Legacy system, and that needs to be applauded.

First, since I am an inveterate alt-whore (i.e. I always like to have characters of every class and craft to make sure I don't miss out on anything nifty, and no I'm totally not OCD why would you say such a thingdoIhavesomethingonmyshirt?  Now I have to go wash my hands.  Five times.) it's nice to see a major game system entirely designed to gently stroke that particular pleasure center of my brain.

Second, I really like the breakdown into both account-wide unlocks (again, per-server) and character specific unlocks.  I like that they have a required Legacy level to access them.

I think that the Legacy system as it exists right now, if it had been in the game at launch, would be considered a landmark addition to the MMO systems design pantheon, up there with things like Rift's dynamic events or WoW's instance finder.  Whether it's a system an individual player uses or not, it's one that deserves to be looked at for every new game being designed.  It might not fit, but the devs should give something like it full consideration.

I also have some issues with the implementation though.  Almost all of the unlocks come at a price in credits.  I understand to some degree, but it is quite frustrating having had to grind up my Legacy level to reach the point where I can get a goodie only to have to grind credits to pay for it.

I would very much like to see a system where some amount of the goodies can be acquired with, let's call them "Legacy points" because I called them that a few paragraphs back, and then the others can be purchased.  These Legacy points would be generated simply by getting Legacy levels.

This is especially true on the per-character perks where it would be nice to get some Legacy value without having to buy it.

But SWTOR's Legacy is a solid system, an extremely good first take on something I would like to see adopted and adapted for many MMOs.

To quote Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", "It..Could...WORK!"

YOU CAN'T LEVERAGE WITHOUT A FULCRUM

So what went wrong with this whole SWTOR Legacy thing?  Why hasn't it helped turn TOR into a (pardon the pun) game-changer?

Pretty simple, really.  Strangely, the replayability of the KOTOR single-player games didn't translate to the MMO, historically a much more replay-friendly environment.

The reasons for it are pretty straightforward.  Freedom and choice.

In the KOTOR games, your choices really do matter.  You can have storylines fork, some quests may or may not be available, companions can die, and (at least in the first game) the ending can be entirely different...all depending on your choices.

And, excepting the beginning and ending locations, you'll have a lot of freedom to choose what planet to go to, what quests to do in what order, and so on.

These two things combined provide for a much richer, fuller feeling game, one where you get to define your own path and forge your own fate, to be hyperbolic.  When you finish your first game of KOTOR you can pretty much depend on two reactions, "That was pretty goddamned cool!" and "I wonder what would have happened if I had..."  And then you'd probably restart the game.

And that's the reaction they were counting on providing the fulcrum for the Legacy system to build subscriber loyalty, if not subscriber fanaticism.

But because of the necessities of a functioning MMO, those sort of defining choices and freedom are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to engineer.

Often in BioWare's games, the choices are pretty stark.  I've joked for years that it's "You meet an old woman who needs your help.  Do you A) give her all your money, or B) slay her and feast upon her flesh?"

Well, in an MMO if you choose A and as a result she gives your newly broke-ass character an awesome ability, at some point the people who chose B need to get that ability too or you've inherently broken your MMO as there is now a "right" answer to the Old Lady Question.

And there's the contradiction...in an MMO with lasting choice, there's either a right answer that gives an advantage (which is untenable in an MMO) or there's no right answer and whichever way the player chooses they get the same advantage...in which case, obviously, choice doesn't matter.

In TOR, choice is a complete non-factor outside of story conversations.  With the exception of Advanced Class, no choice you make in the game make any notable difference.

And there's no freedom to go with the no choice.  You have a single path from L1 to L50.  You'll go from one planet to the next in the pre-designated order.  Once on a planet you'll go from quest hub to quest hub in the pre-designated order.  Sure, you can go back and...uh...re-do daily missions in zones you've outlevelled.  That spells "fun", right?  Well it gets the "eff you" right anyway.

No freedom, no choice, no fulcrum.  No fulcrum, no leverage.  No leverage and the Legacy system is trying to push Jell-O up a hill with a rope.

To quote Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", "You know, I'm a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I can help you with that hump."

And to quote Marty Feldman in response, "What hump?"