Before I get flamed and the message gets lost, please understand that I love Star Wars and I think that SWTOR has been a fantastic game - up until Shadow of Revan and now this latest expansion takes the game in a very bad direction.
To me, the problem with SWTOR has always been its nearly meaningless, grindy combat system. Holds are relatively worthless, slows are movement slows and not actual speed of action slows, and CC effects (in general) last for such a short amount of time that they are essentially tactically meaningless. Your rotation on all characters really just becomes a sequence of stacking similar effects, or priming for an effect combo, while holding the interrupts for when they are needed.
Movement is general and specifically in combat also has problems. It makes zero sense that when I'm in combat I move slower than when not. And most importantly it's exceedingly annoying. There are effects that some classes get as tree abilities that bridge that, and there are modifications/additions in the 4.0 update that help, so that's a step in the right direction.
Speeders are another example. They don't feel fast, are not actually very fast, and because there is no physics, they just feel horrible. All you'd have to do is make speeders fun, fast and realistic and moving from place to place would suddenly be something you want to do just to do it, instead of a clunky drudgery.
Back to combat - because of the lack of deliberate usefulness of specific abilities, the experience of combat becomes monotonous. Everyone plays games for different reasons, and everyone plays this game for different reasons. But for me, I play an MMO for the character development. I want to anticipate gaining abilities and seeing those abilities put to use in a tactical way in combat. In SWTOR, I couldn't care less about getting new abilities. It's better since the 3.0 tree-structure conversion, but it's still relatively unimportant to me. Some more so than others. For example, if I play a smuggler, 25% damage boost to SG is nice. But you get that so early, you've long since forgotten about it at higher levels. There's just little excitement to build the character.
There should be less abilities overall, and getting a new one should be a momentous and useful proposition. Players should even get to pick the ability that they want (and have to not get something else), not just pick minor tweaks to existing abilities. That way, everyone's build would be very deliberate and the act of crafting your build over the character's progression would be so much more meaningful.
Same thing with appearance - Adaptive armor is great, and that's also the players voting that being able to change appearance, independent of stats is a no brainer. But because you have to buy or farm gear to change your appearance, you don't have the sense of freedom to change your appearance at any time. In the milieu it makes more sense to NOT have gear changes be easy and to have stats be tied to gear. But in a practical sense, players want that feature, and it adds a tremendous amount of sizzle to the process of developing a character - which again, for me, is why I play MMO's period.
Now, with the latest expansion, the pacing is all wrong. You can hit 65 in a single session, which is just nuts. It feels like eating a whole bag of processed sugar and then laying on the couch for 7 hours wondering if you're going to go into a diabetic coma. I found myself fidgeting, waiting on the story to finish. If I want to watch a movie, I would just watch a movie. I found myself becoming impatient waiting on story segments to complete. It's like a song that builds you up for the chorus, over and over, but never actually released into the chorus.
Then this had an even more interesting effect - by the time you actually get to combat segments, you're so stymied by the movie watching grind that the combat seems even more meaningless. It's just wave after wave of Sky Troopers, rotate, rinse, repeat. And for the Jedi Shadow I was playing, there were literally no gear drops that I actually wanted. Dropping mods would be a great addition, you know, since basically everyone will be in adaptive gear at this point in the game.
Not gearing companions and having all companions serve any function was mistake too. Yes, it removes some tedium from the game, and yes it takes some burden off higher level players who really want to gear their companions out. But it comes at the cost of more diversity - it adds to the meaninglessness of the game overall.
I get that BioWare is all about storytelling. I get that many fans like that. But this is an MMO, and there's little reason to group with anyone (especially not now - objectives are gimped down to where you can solo everything) except at end-game. To me, the balance between storytelling and game play was fine in the base game. It was the combat system that needed (and still needs) help. And then, because character development is problematic, there's just no angle to cling to - no crux of enjoyment.
The Alliance idea is great. The story content was strange. The trailer builds you up for the idea that you're going to be fighting this new foe - and his two sons - no wait, the one son. But then you play the expansion, the main foe is dead in the first few minutes. Denouement big time.
And the currency systems - for the love of Pete, you guys should unify those. It's out of control, and super annoying.
I could go on about this for days. There have been points for me where the game seemed like it might make it, but these past two expansion packs annoy me to the point that I will just keep subscribing when a major update happens, and then quickly unsubscribe and cease to play. And that makes me a sad Panda, because I want to love SWTOR.
