I'm level 50. Here's what I want to see in this game.

[RolyartNala]

TL;DR

SWTOR is off to a great start, but there’s a lot of stuff not currently in the game that I really want to see in the game.

 

~~~~~

 

I think, on the balance, SWTOR is fantastic. There is much I love about the game, rough though parts of it currently are—hey, back off, it’s brand new, right? There is much to do in Austin. Earlier I reviewed the things I liked and didn’t like about the game currently, to much positive response (thanks gang). Today what I’d like to do is talk about stuff I want to see added to the game, and why. For the record, I’m not going to mention things I want that the development team has already signaled that they plan to implement, such as increased customization at 50 or different PVP brackets for 50s and non-50s. I’m only going to discuss stuff that there is no indication whether or not BioWare is planning to implement.

 

STUFF I WANT IN SWTOR

 

Worlds With More Pizzazz

So, yes, SWTOR has a distinct aesthetic, and each world was carefully designed to look and feel a certain way. I’m down, I dig it, good job. That said, however, there is a certain quiescence to many of the planets in this game; for example, on Hoth, where you’d think there would be roving bands of pirates out looking for trouble, salvage and mayhem, we have…groups of pirates standing around scratching themselves and waiting to be killed by intrepid players. It’s the same story everywhere: on Balmorra, you have probe droids that aren’t actually, you know, probing anything, but just hanging out within the same 30 meters or so and hoping that you don’t notice them. On Voss there are predators that aren’t predating, and scouts that aren’t scouting. This is the refrain most everywhere—while the skies are filled with flying cars, fiery cruisers, or aerial assaults, the landscapes are filled with distinct groups of tightly-packed mobs standing around waiting to fulfill bonus quest requirements. Sure, in a few places there are scripted encounters with hot NPC-on-NPC action, but this isn’t the norm, and it needs to be. I hate to frame it this way, but come on, fellas. This is 2012. EQ had static groups of mobs in 1999. Can you breathe a little more life into the ambient denizens of your galaxy?

 

Simple Macros

Settle down, folks. I am against macros that “play the game for you.” I do, however, dearly love macros that make life within virtual worlds easier, such as my all time favorite macro,

/attack

/cast BigAmazingSpell

/em thinks you’re a motherless son of a goat

Typically, in that Elf-and-Orc MMO that shall not be named, all of my attacks were macro’d in this way, which made it painless to maneuver through combat, as I could simply sidle up to my next victim, press an attack power, and proceed to pwn. As a healer, I would usually macro my FavoriteAwesomeTrinket to my Best”Ohcrap”Spell, freeing up space on my toolbar and eliminating yet another variable in an endless array of variables in combat. I’ll admit it—I hate useable items with an great and undying passion. They eat up limited real estate on the toolbar and only come into play once every 2 or 5 or 30 minutes. So why not let me macro them to a similarly situational power and make life a little easier? This isn’t game-breaking, folks. It’s smart. Some of us don’t have the manual dexterity to use a 100-button mouse or G15 keyboard. Why should the 15-year old who doesn’t have arthritis have the tactical advantage because he can jam fifty skills onto fifty keys and reach them all effortlessly? Work with me here, BioWare.

 

Click-to-Cast, Especially for Healing

Along the same lines as simple macros is click-to-cast. I know there was a huge debate about this on the beta forums, but the fact is that this is another quality-of-life thing, especially for healers. Why do healers spend 90% of their time eye-humping toolbars? Because they have to first target someone (by clicking or otherwise), and then click the heal. Don’t kid yourselves if you don’t think the time spent doing this doesn’t add up in combat—it does. And it also turns healing into a game of whack-a-mole, which rather invalidates the stupid amount of money I spent on this top-of-the-line gaming rig, since I like to be able to actually look at the beautiful game rather than the UI. BioWare’s raid UI is almost there—its inherent functionality is a workable, basic version of mods such as HealBot or Clique. Now go one step further, please, and add click-to-cast. Healers across the galaxy will breath a sigh of relief, and those of us that might not otherwise heal thanks to the hassle might give it a go.

 

Better Targeting

I’m possibly a weirdo when it comes to targeting bad guys. For years, in that Elf-and-Orc MMO, I targeted bad guys using two synchronous methods—clicking on them and by proximity (refer above to my macro request). In that Elf-and-Orc MMO, clicking on highly mobile bad guys was not that difficult, since we could turn on these big, fat nameplates over their heads that we could click, rather than their tiny, distant models which may or may not be currently in a dogpile. In SWTOR, you can’t click the nameplates. This, plus the camera issue I’ll discuss below, really, really throws a screwball into the way I’ve been targeting bad guys since 2005. It is all but impossible for me to target a moving object now, especially in PVP, thanks to my old guy reflexes and occasionally arthritic digits. In that Elf-and-Orc MMO, even despite these genetic flaws, I was hot on shifting targets. In SWTOR, I am bad at it. Now, you might be saying, “Why not tab-target, dude?” That’s valid. My only answer is “This is the way I’ve always done it, it’s what I’m used to, it’s what I’m good at, and I want to be able to continue doing it.” I’ll go one step further and remind everyone that good MMOs, by design, robustly support multiple styles of play, preferences and configurations. Right now, I am sad to report, SWTOR doesn’t support mine. So what I want from BW here is to make targeting easier. They can do this in two ways: (1) make proximity targeting work better, because right now it’s not so great at picking the monster that is actually next to you and on your screen, and (2) allow us to click on nameplates to target.

 

I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE IF I CAN’T TURN OFF THE CAMERA’S AUTO-SWIVEL

This one is frustrating beyond belief, given my style of play. In SWTOR, as I’m sure most of you have noticed, when your character is in motion and you’ve rotated the camera—say, behind you to check your six—when you let go of the left-click mouse button, the camera auto-swivels back to the default position behind you. Every. Single. Freaking. Time. And there’s no option to turn this crap off. For me, especially in PVP, this is a game-breaker. In that Elf-and-Orc-MMO, I almost never played with my camera at six-o’clock, because by rotating the camera while in motion, I could click to target people behind me or on my flank, and then be lined up and ready to lay some hurt on them as soon as they were in range or the right position. In SWTOR PVP, this is what my reflexes still do (remember, I’ve trained them to do this since 2005—and earlier, actually, since I was doing it in EQ in 1999), but when I stop holding down left-click on a swivel to click someone in SWTOR, my camera merrily swivels back to six o’clock, disorienting me and getting me killed, because by the time I’ve reoriented myself, found my intended target, swung my toon’s physical facing around and then pressed the skill I had intended to use, the bad guy has had several glorious seconds of carte blanche to savage what is now my steaming corpse. Thanks BioWare. Thanks a lot. Can we please, please, please have the option to turn off the camera’s auto-swivel? Pretty please? Because so help me, the more this happens, the less safe any person in my immediate physical proximity is from random, frustrated violence. ”What happened, Officer?” “I don’t know, sir, he just snapped and strangled the barista for no apparent reason. The other patrons said that he was screaming something like “Screw this UI! Screw this UI!” the whole time. We’re not sure what it means.”

 

~~~~~

 

That’s it. That’s my whole list. Pretty short overall, right? Certainly not impossible to accomplish. This is, of course, discounting the hundreds of random bugs, overtuned content, lack of customization at 50, lack of scaling for crafting and tons of other things they’ve already announced they are working on diligently. I forgive them these things and need not make a mention of it. BioWare, I love this game. I really do. If you address my little list here, you’ll have a customer for years.

Edited January 11, 2012 by RolyartNala

[RolyartNala]

Wow, look at those forums fly. Everyone must be at work.

[KennethHoover]

You have brought well thought out and constructive issues with the game. I am on board with correcting these ideas. They would benefit the game greatly.

[TradewindNQ]

I was actually getting prepared to blast this thread with piss. But then I looked at it and realized...yeah I want most of that too. Nice job. Edited January 11, 2012 by TradewindNQ

[Nikolu]

Why on earth would you change your font color to that, then write a wall of text. Its mind numbing.

 

Summarize your points.

[RolyartNala]

Why on earth would you change your font color to that, then write a wall of text. Its mind numbing.

 

Summarize your points.

It's only 1,000 words long, broken up into distinct paragraphs with headers. I don't know what to tell you, mate. Maybe you should just stick to the sports section of the paper. Edited January 11, 2012 by RolyartNala

[Nikolu]

It's 1,000 words long, broken up into distinct paragraphs with headers. I don't know what to tell you, mate. Maybe you should just stick to the sports section of the paper.

 

 

You did a light blue font on a dark blue background... think... then act. Summarize your points, they have only been made by 50 other people this week on this forum.

 

Maybe bump a post from someone else who has posted the exact same thing as you? Its hard to admit you aren't unique in your thoughts regarding a game played by hundreds of thousands.

[oPURT]

I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE IF I CAN’T TURN OFF THE CAMERA’S AUTO-SWIVEL

 

Yep, there is no need for this silly feature and it drives me nuts.

 

MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!

[TormDK]

Agreed on all points. It pains me greatly having to healing when it could be so much easier without making the battles less of a challenge.

 

Who knows, I might even get to shoot at something while healing! *gasp*

[TESTyourMIGHT]

I agree with the camera angle, but in a different perspective. It drives me nuts having to hold RIGHT CLICK to stay behind the chracter. I'd like to lock the camera behind the character's movements.

[AaronPenick]

/signed

 

Dont really care about auto swivel but for the love of all that is holy in the known 'verse not having macros is srsly damaging my calm with every new skill i get.

 

Nice post

[zefamin]

I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE IF I CAN’T TURN OFF THE CAMERA’S AUTO-SWIVEL

 

This, FOR GODS SAKE THIS. And add the 'reset camera' button when you do, so I can reset camera immediately.

[Durt]

You did a light blue font on a dark blue background... think... then act. Summarize your points, they have only been made by 50 other people this week on this forum.

 

Maybe bump a post from someone else who has posted the exact same thing as you? Its hard to admit you aren't unique in your thoughts regarding a game played by hundreds of thousands.

 

Meh I don't think it's bad, I think it's better than black on white where the contract can be very hard on the eyes.

[Striker]

Agreed. Threads like this need more attention. These are all improvements that don't dumb down the game.

[tonbery]

Why on earth would you change your font color to that, then write a wall of text. Its mind numbing.

 

Summarize your points.

 

This is by far the best organization of words on this forum to date. Especially for the topic that he/she is writing about.

 

For the "Worlds With More Pizzazz", I feel this would be one of the lowest on their list. Mainly because of the added work they have to go through to provide the voice acting/interactive quests. I agree that they should add atleast a small bit of "pizzazz" by making the NPCs do SOMETHING, other that just stand there or walk around.

 

The static camera is something they could easily fix in a small patch. I hope this is done ASAP.

[Isharel]

A constructive thread...? LVL: IMPOSSIBRU!!!

 

/Signed + 1

[RolyartNala]

For the "Worlds With More Pizzazz", I feel this would be one of the lowest on their list. Mainly because of the added work they have to go through to provide the voice acting/interactive quests. I agree that they should add atleast a small bit of "pizzazz" by making the NPCs do SOMETHING, other that just stand there or walk around.

 

The static camera is something they could easily fix in a small patch. I hope this is done ASAP.

Agreed. I certainly want gameplay & bug fixes before they focus on aesthetic enhancements.

[PantheraMorag]

I agree, and you explained to me why I keep running the wrong way everytime I go through to another zone or through a door way. I've never understood why this game keeps making me run back the way I came before this..

 

Thank you for a well-constructed post. As a healer, I really, really want click to cast!

And as a sniper, I really, really want better targeting! Half the time tab target does not work, or it targets everything BUT the mob I want to target.

Also, because I sit so far back, it makes it really hard to see if the red circle is on the mob people are hitting, or the mob a few millimeter next to him..

[tiennen]

I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE IF I CAN’T TURN OFF THE CAMERA’S AUTO-SWIVEL

 

this is the only problem i have with this game. and really, you would think it would be an easy fix.

Edited January 11, 2012 by tiennen

[RolyartNala]

this is the only problem i have with this game. and really, you would think it would be an easy fix.

Sure. My guess is it's not a technical issue, but a prioritization one.

[Pastorfrog]

I wholeheartedly agree on the camera swivel. It's my number one gripe at this point, just ahead of my desire for a size 2.5 male bodytype. (And far more likely to be added)