You could add something constructive rather than this ********. Explaining how to still care about them in a 2nd or 3rd playthrough seems very much harder to do than just admit that you pretty much won't care, especially for the side quests.

All of those points are ********. Blizzard knows how to engineer excellent games and it knows how to focus on the important aspects instead of spending half the money on content no one will care about in one month (voiceovers). And to put *me* in the game it needs more than some soundfiles and a mediocre story. Blizzard does that better with crisp, pinpoint accurate controls instead of the laggy sluggish mess we have here. Oh and all the DLCs were ****.

This isn't the thread you're looking for... Here it is: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=89781&page=15

Besides all your other points (I will write an answer to that another time, I wanted to bring this out quickly), I must see that our point of what makes a RPG a RPG heavily differs. IMHO, just adding Voiceover to a game doesn't make it a RPG. A MMORPG lives through it's players. The classical MMORPG is more of a sandbox game and I think it wouldn't even need any built in story AT ALL. EVE would be a good example, SWG sounds like one, too. SWTOR is NOT a MMORPG just because they built in some soundfiles. To me, it seems more like a coop button smasher focused heavily on interactive cutscenes. Or you could call it a OIM, an online interactive movie (yeah, I just made up that term )

That's why I said "RIP" and "I'd" as in "I would" O.o.

I never played SWG (R.I.P. though) but I'd definately try it out now.

Guess what... I chose to tell the jedi about them and got the same color crystal. Awesome choices.

The main problem with this is, for me, that it just feels wrong to not like the conversations. Take wow for an example: You get a story with every quest, and if you're in the mood for it, the stories you read there are very well written (since cata) and entertaining. Also, they don't have this bitter and dark taste like in TOR (Games should be fun, right?). But if you DON'T read them(90% of the time for most players), you DON'T get the feeling that this is not the right game for you since clearly not half of the games budget was spent on them. In TOR, however, the stories are clearly worse (due to the sheer amounts of them / time, and BW not having a horde of writers), you have to spend 30% of your leveling time watching them, they are very repetitive and if you don't like them, you get the feeling like this game is not for you since the pure amount of focus and money BW seems to put on their beloved stories. Skipping everything feels wrong, it feels like you're playing the wrong game. Yet, I have to do it to not die of a headache after 30 minutes of playing. If this wasn't TOR, I would have never opened a thread about the story of a MMO. All this money should have been spent elsewhere...

Well, then essentially this game is an interactive movie. How in the world should an interactive movie keep you playing for months like a MMO should do? And again the question: What choices? I never saw a choice that matters.

Because that aspect of the game is so unbelievably boring, one month is even exaggerated in my eyes. I'll give the biggest part of the community less than a week of playing constantly before skipping everything. One month is for the players that REALLY enjoy it now. Oh, and at first I was baffled, too, and I thought it would be great. And then you realize that you can't change anything and your char will be EXACTLY THE SAME, same companions, gear, ship, missions, SAME EVERYTHING as one who read through everything, you won't be able to see a difference between those two chars. And as soon as people realize that, they start to skip the weird conversations with a good/bad morality system that could have been written by a ten years old. The conversations are like going through a bunch of tunnels and before every tunnel you can decide if you take the left, right or middle lane. At the end, you're still on the same street as everyone else and your decisions didn't matter the slightest.

Well, you have the EXACT SAME thing here. The only difference is that you have a boring 5 minute conversation beforehand. Oh, and if you decide to not kill the ten wolves, you can go through it again.

Indeed, this escapes me.

I love how all the people say they will still care. Maybe you will care while leveling your first character to 50. I could understand not skipping them when playing a second character to hear the other half of the sound clips (Yes, I said half on purpose since many of your three choices don't affect the answer AT ALL). But when leveling a third char and still not skipping the VO scenes, I will gladly call an ambulance for you. You can't read a book 3 times if you're sane (especially a book of this quality). And leveling a toon will be the only reason where voiceacting actually matters. Oh, and if you won't level toons and just play your level 50 char, guess what... YOU WON'T BE CARING ABOUT VOICE ACTING IN ONE MONTH. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I disagree. Your actions will not affect your companions AT ALL since you can just buy gifts for them in your capital. Besides, what more does your companion's affection add than more voiceacting?

Actually, I did, and I liked most of them (Kotor and ME1). But what we have here is just an overkill of pointless and plain bad storytelling without ever giving REAL consequences. The old BW titles did this very well. Also, the old titles were like 50 hours long. What we have here is an extreme overdose. It will not work.

You heard it here first I've started to skip every conversation at lvl 22 and pick my answers at random now, only paying attention to good / light side points. Everything you say will be pointless after the conversation ends. Everything! I have yet to see a consequence that adds more than more voiceover and in the rarest cases killing one insignificant dude. The stories of the sidequests have the quality of a c-movie at best. And this is where the major part of the budget went? Sorry, but this makes me laugh. Will the decisions change your quests? Nope. Will the decisions change the world or parts of the map? Nope. Will the decisions change following decisions? Nope. All they do is adding more pointless, boring textlines. Will parts of your gear change based on a soulless number counting how "good" or "evil" your decisions were? Well yes, I have to give that point to Bioware. I'm finished with this boring, pointless abomination called a story. I really hope the gameplay gets better, but honestly I don't have much hope. This is an MMO, let us write our OWN stories! Not follow a pointless path some underpaid or just plain bad writer sucked out of his fingers. If I want a story, I'll go watch a movie or read a book. Gameplay is what counts in a game.

I couldn't agree more. The voiceover was nice first, but after lvl 23 I just hammered the space bar because, actually, nothing important ever happens and no decision has more consequences than more voiceover. I'm tapping the spacebar like a madman now and pick my answers at random without reading them. If this "story" is the main thing in this game, well... I will get some hate for that but wow-cataclysm had way better quests and even a more interesting story to them A pointless 5 minute conversation to collect 20 bear asses is not what I call a good story. And at the end you can choose if you donate the 20 bear asses (good) or sell them (evil). Now that's some important decisions there. Oh well...

Here's another thread explaining the problem: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=84943 Let's all hope it's not the engine.

Awesome post! I tried to explain the exact same thing here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=745754#post745754 but you clearly found better words for it I agree with you that character responsiveness is BY FAR the most important thing that makes or breaks an MMO. Let's hope the developers can see how important this is. If the combat can't hold on par with WoW's, the game is dead in 5 months.

I'm playing a gunslinger (eq to sniper). The delay is everywhere, but especially in the whole cover system I feel it a lot.

I feel the same, although I won't go back because of another point, and that's the lack of content. But the crystal clear combat system of wow has yet to be beaten, I wonder why no game developer just licenses the wow engine (or won't they sell it?) because it seems to be a masterpiece. Warhammer fell because of it's engine, Lotro did, rift is about to die, all because the combat feels sluggish and unfun.

They shouldn't let beautiful animations cripple gameplay. As soon as you hit a button on your keyboard, the skill should execute and bring the desired damage/utility. A short animation can follow after that. No one needs an extensive animation that decelerates your actions. This is something WoW does right.

I'm not really talking about GCD here. I'm talking about an additional layer of delay. Also, even when you finished casting something, there is still a minor delay. Combat in this game gives me a headache. I'm also not talking about makros. It's like comparing Doom 1 to Counter Strike. Edit: Even running and jumping feels weird. I like the story and the speech and all, don't know about enough content, but without fun gameplay this game will not hold players for long. Everything feels indirect.

PvP and in in lesser degree PvE combat in an mmo stands and falls with the engine. But at this time, everything feels really unsmooth. You click a skill and it takes like a quarter second until the skill begins to execute. This is especially noticable in fast paced pvp combat. Compare it to WoW, where combat and movement feel very very good (Yes, 7 more years I know I know yadda yadda). I'm not talking about any content here, just the general feeling of gameplay. Most of the time I wait for skills to execute (even for ones without cast time) and everything feels very buggy and laggy. So I'm asking: Is this a minor issue which can be fixed easily or is the engine broken to a point where you can't repair it? Am I the only one who thinks like that? I'm having a hard time enjoying combat, especially compared to WoW.

I will bump this until I get an answer. And sorry for abusing the UK Forums for an issue for German players, it seems we have no mods at all.