SWTOR endgame is an absolute disaster

[Bionixx]

This is my main concern. Without Combat Log, we wont have Damage Meters mod. I was a very very good DPS'er back in WoW. People there notices me whatever toons I make me becoz of it. Thats how I was able to get invited from a very decent guild and how I get priority on raid spot. I became well respected coz it showed how good I am on spec'ing, gearing, rotation, timing of use of cd's, etc.

 

Right now without damage meters in SWTOR, I am nobody. Whether I perform or not in terms of damage, whether I dont put points on talent tree, people wont notice it. I would always be left out on raid spot while they bring in bunch of noobs and keeps wondering why they kept wiping and wiping.

 

I am with you man. People who say that Combat logs are bad are always the ones who perform poorly. Give us Combat logs.

[vortexdr]

Still waiting for THE BLOODY COMBAT LOG. The devs here need to go track down the guys from Verant to unlock the magical secret of the combat log as it must have been lost in the past 10 years... Oh wait... Warcraft had it...

 

This and no /roll feature lacking is just massive in my eyes. I mean really...games 10+ years ago managed to implement this. If its an oversight its pathetic and if they choose to leave it out its even worse. I really dunno how you can release a game without those two basic functions.

[AQJ_DK]

I am with you man. People who say that Combat logs are bad are always the ones who perform poorly. Give us Combat logs.

 

Combat logs - yes please

 

Addons - No thanks

 

Combat logs are great, both for improving and to figure out why your raid hit enrage, who wasnt pulling his weight?

 

UI modification are also fine as they allow people to chose a visual style that they like

 

But mods WoW-style is a slippery slope, im all for giving people information - not assisted gameplay

 

So Combatlogs and damange parser is ok - Healbot's Raidalert and what else they are called not so much

[Zilliztra]

There is nothing to strive for in this game. Get level 50 face roll content, join pvp and farm

 

That is this game at level 50.

[Bionixx]

Combat logs - yes please

 

Addons - No thanks

 

Combat logs are great, both for improving and to figure out why your raid hit enrage, who wasnt pulling his weight?

 

UI modification are also fine as they allow people to chose a visual style that they like

 

But mods WoW-style is a slippery slope, im all for giving people information - not assisted gameplay

 

So Combatlogs and damange parser is ok - Healbot's Raidalert and what else they are called not so much

 

I agree to an extent. I have no problems with no UI addons as long as there are other queues. For example if a boss is targetting someone for a special ability, I would like that to be announced. Or a boss is about to do a pbAoE attack that only the tank can survive in melee, I like that announced as well. Also, since so many classes are proc dependent, I would love to have some sort of pop up when you proc stuff. If Bioware gives us that, I don't think addons would be needed.

 

Oh, and I guess more color choices for the UI, I personally don't mind blue but I know other people do.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Bionixx

[Athelen]

You're all so pissed about the game and yet you continue to play it. If you dont like it, there's tons of other games out there for you to play. The game has been out only about 3 months now and the majority of the player base isnt even into raiding yet, so the fact that you're QQ that certain bugs havent been fixed, when only a sliver of the player base is even eligible for it, is rather rediculous.

 

And the game's not that buggy. You say it's the most bugged game release ever, but i tried warhammer online 7 months after it was released, and i've never gotten stuck on terrain so much in my life. And in Warhammer there was no /stuck feature. If you got stuck, you waited a week for a ticket response. And for every other issue, you waited months for a reply. I wait a day at most for my tickets in SWTOR.

[mindriot]

There is nothing to strive for in this game. Get level 50 face roll content, join pvp and farm

 

That is this game at level 50.

 

How's this different than any other mmo? How can a game dev appease people that have no lives other than living at mom and dads house and playing video games all day? You can't make sh*t hard enough for you, because you have all day and night to accomplish it eventually. My guild hasn't even thought about clearing karaga's even on normal, and I'm pretty happy with that. If your complaining about end game content being buggy....well welcome to a poorly kept secret, your bug testing end game content when you get there in a month, all mmo devs use people like you to bug test. The game will be ironed out in a couple of patches...I hope to Jesus or whatever you believe, that your not here.

[Morpurgo]

Not even mentioning that Bounty Hunter story is still broken and patched together with ducktape, leaving it unfinished indefinetly.

And Soa in Eternity Vault - it's just beyond crazy, ran 7 tries last week on it on normal mode and every single time something bugged out, finally people just gave up.

There are way too many bugs in the endgame and instead of making new content they REALLY should put bugfixing on overdrive for a while.

[Maloken]

For example if a boss is targetting someone for a special ability, I would like that to be announced. Or a boss is about to do a pbAoE attack that only the tank can survive in melee, I like that announced as well. Also, since so many classes are proc dependent, I would love to have some sort of pop up when you proc stuff. If Bioware gives us that, I don't think addons would be needed. .

 

Everything you complain about is actually announced somewhere on your UI. Just open your eyes and don't be that assisted. I have completed all the HM content, 4 man and 8 man, and I can tell you that every ability a boss use gives you a debuff, or a red warning on the top of the screen. I have never encounter an even where a boss would use an ability that couldn't be countered by good positioning or a quick look at your debuffs.

 

As of proc, you get a special animation, a special audio (character will sometimes laugh like IA or BH) and a buff. What you want more ? A bot playing instead of you ? Just learn to use your UI properly and don't focus only on your abilitybar ffs....

 

WoW has defined poor standards in terms of skill... People are so used to being assisted, damn you CT_Raid.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Maloken

[Spartanik]

Not even mentioning that Bounty Hunter story is still broken and patched together with ducktape, leaving it unfinished indefinetly.

And Soa in Eternity Vault - it's just beyond crazy, ran 7 tries last week on it on normal mode and every single time something bugged out, finally people just gave up.

There are way too many bugs in the endgame and instead of making new content they REALLY should put bugfixing on overdrive for a while.

 

I understand your meaning, but why on earth they cant do both? i mean add new content and bug fix?

[Morpurgo]

I understand your meaning, but why on earth they cant do both? i mean add new content and bug fix?

 

Because their new content adds new bugs, come to think of it their bugfixing adds new bugs too...

Also their major focus should be on optimizing their game engine that has prehistoric graphics but tortures computers like Crysis 2. And I'm quite sure they have some memory leaks in the blasted thing also from the way the client never runs more then 6 hours without crashing.

[Hironobu]

Because their new content adds new bugs, come to think of it their bugfixing adds new bugs too...

Also their major focus should be on optimizing their game engine that has prehistoric graphics but tortures computers like Crysis 2. And I'm quite sure they have some memory leaks in the blasted thing also from the way the client never runs more then 6 hours without crashing.

 

No kidding right? Once you start to actually look at and itemize the huge list of bugs in this game, it makes you wonder if fixing it is even the developer's goal?

 

The fixes that do come along are nothing compared to the overall scope of unfinished garbage that sits around in the game now that we are MONTHS AFTER RELEASE.

 

I'm almost certain that they just laid everybody off on the software side of the house and are raking in cash until the game dies of natural causes.

 

CEO Golden Parachute anybody?

[Karotka]

You have to be patient....

I remembered WoW at the beginning, and it was much bigger pain in the neck than SWTOR...

There are so much variables to count with in each, even small, change...Try it...create some advanced program, and you will see...

Its more like nightmare than easy money...

The best what we can do now, is create tickets...not only cry on forums and yelling about quitting.

If you dont like it..so then good bye and wish you luck in another game...

[Baconmonster]

You have to be patient....

I remembered WoW at the beginning, and it was much bigger pain in the neck than SWTOR...

There are so much variables to count with in each, even small, change...Try it...create some advanced program, and you will see...

Its more like nightmare than easy money...

The best what we can do now, is create tickets...not only cry on forums and yelling about quitting.

If you dont like it..so then good bye and wish you luck in another game...

 

I would agree with this line of thinking, if the majority of the bugs he mentions over a month ago weren't still in the game. It's been a month and whenever I submit a ticket about a bug like this the automated response either tells me it's working as intended or they're looking into it. I understand bugs, I understand it's not a simple process to fix them. I don't understand how other MMOs get these bugs sorted in a couple weeks and some even in a few days, yet Bioware has had a month to clear up a lot of these bugs, and there are still a ton around. They either need to hire more people to work on this project or get people who know how to fix the problems they have. People are quickly running out of patience with this game in its current state. There are just too many alternatives to pull people away, they don't have time to waste.

[_Flin_]

You have to be patient....

 

No. This is wrong. As a paying customer I just have to quit as soon as my patience, of which I have plenty, runs out.

 

I remembered WoW at the beginning, and it was much bigger pain in the neck than SWTOR...

 

So what? WoW at least had addons to handle the low priority pains in the ***.

Plus, WoW is irrelevant. This is not WoW. And I don't care about WoW. It had about 10 - 13 days to maxlevel, while this game has 6 (both if you took your time). So way earlier endgame, therefore the need to be better.

 

There are so much variables to count with in each, even small, change...Try it...create some advanced program, and you will see...

 

That's what you have formal testing for. You create test cases and run them. You make changes, you run all testcases again. Unless there is a new bug you don't know and test for, alarm bells will go off.

 

The best what we can do now, is create tickets...not only cry on forums and yelling about quitting.

If you dont like it..so then good bye and wish you luck in another game...

 

How pointing out that there is a huuuuuuge list of bugs, while the fixes are rather minimal, amounts to "crying", is beyond me. This is not crying. These are legitimate issues. And 10-15 fixes each minor patch? I mean... c'mon, what the eff? I fix more bugs than that alone at work in the same timeframe! Looks like they have 2-3 people, maximum, working on all the issues.

 

Maybe they have a QA process that takes really really long. But then I wonder how they test at all, when things like the SOA tank bug can make it into production.

 

Add to that the abysmal performance issues that have neither been acknowledged nor any useful help provided (although the community has already tracked many issues down to the fx asset file), add to that pvp animation unbalance, add to that crafting failures, etc., and you arrive at a point where it seems that quite some people work on new features, while the bugfixers are heavily understaffed.

[Ozbeast]

The ones complaining I'm sure are the groups of friends or guildies who came over from other games. already accustomed to working together. have all committed their free time and /or lives to dominating MMOs. Of course your going to smash all the new content in no time. good luck finding a MMO that can streem you guys a life. there will never be such a thing. unless you do it yourself. I think if you and your guildies went to New York for a month somewhere along the line you would find your self board. Everything in moderation my friends.

 

This is still a new MMO. getting better than the first day i played and has much more in the works.

[Morpurgo]

The ones complaining I'm sure are the groups of friends or guildies who came over from other games. already accustomed to working together. have all committed their free time and /or lives to dominating MMOs. Of course your going to smash all the new content in no time. good luck finding a MMO that can streem you guys a life. there will never be such a thing. unless you do it yourself. I think if you and your guildies went to New York for a month somewhere along the line you would find your self board. Everything in moderation my friends.

 

This is still a new MMO. getting better than the first day i played and has much more in the works.

 

Not like this game is some content giant. It has only 50 levels and even without really trying you are 50 in a month. They should have considered that little more when testing.

[Nemonia]

There are definitely some issues that need attention in Swtor and in my own case regarding end game, I have been trying to get Customer Service assistance with out of BioWare for 2 months due to some problems I ran into, but keep being ignored. Edited February 22, 2012 by Nemonia

[Lord_Rezo]

Bored?

No end game?

Just re-roll and do 90% of the same thing over again!

 

And where is the endgame on World of Pandas? Running crappy dailys over days to get a mount? Grinding the same dungeon for over a month to get all the gear? (this was before WoTLK, now they gift it with commendations). Doing Arenas for the sake of being the most rating? (Oh... such endgame...).

 

SWTOR its 2 months and 10 days old. And yet it got two Operations (if you like to take out SOA there are 9 bosses), around 10 flashpoints which maybe 5 or 6 can be done on Hard Mode, 3 Warzones, 2 daily worlds, a (sadly, bugged, non intended, non planified (?)) world pvp zone (Ilum).

 

I think thats a good amount of content to begin. But there isnt the end. You got 8 storys to play. ¡¡¡8!!! ¡Not even on Dragons Age you had that much!

[_Flin_]

The ones complaining I'm sure are the groups of friends or guildies who came over from other games. already accustomed to working together. have all committed their free time and /or lives to dominating MMOs.

 

You are wrong. In my guild we are all above 30, all having jobs, all taking our time. Some took 1 month to maxlevel, some 1.5.

 

Of course your going to smash all the new content in no time. good luck finding a MMO that can streem you guys a life. there will never be such a thing.

 

While one could make an argument about difficulty and how SWTOR does some things different than other MMOs, 6 days playtime to maxlevel is nothing. Plus the content is so easy that there aren't any speedbumps along the way. You just master everything on the first try, third on the latest. Hero 4? Haha, do it with 2 people + companions.

 

Everything is carebear, xp wherever you go, whatever you do, items whereever you go, whatever you do.

 

You can't avoid smashing the content. It's made this way.

 

And if a casual guild like mine takes it's time to maxlevel, waits for enough people, hten does hardmodes and dailies for two weeks and then goes on the first raid, has 4 of 5 "boss" encounters bugged, has to stop at the endboss because of bugs... well... I can only say: This game is way to easy. And way to buggy. And that's from a casual take-your-time perspective.

 

This is still a new MMO. getting better than the first day i played and has much more in the works.

 

Patch 1.2 will be a turning point. It will be a make or break experience.

 

Account is already canceled and wont be renewed if 1.2 doesn't deliver. Because a quarter of a year is enough to fix the main issues.

[Loupe]

well he made it to 50 before the end of December. 200+hrs to do your storyline alone. He probably played 19+hrs each day. I can see that burning someone out.

 

Long time to be sitting in front of a computer smashing the space bar to be first, so you can run into all the bugs and then complain about it on the forums.

 

I leveled a Sorc to 50 inside of 30 days. Playing some 4-5 Hrs a day on average, completely avoiding heroics and group content. So somewhere between 120-150 hrs total I'd guess.

 

I wouldn't consider myself burnt out, but even Class Story isn't going to compensate for the hours of repeat dialogue I'd have to watch again to follow a different story. I want a skip dialogue option now. Just print to text log and give me my choices screen. I want the choice to listen to the voice content or skip it. Because the conversations are not dynamic to the characters. All interactions are the same, all player convo choices are the same.

 

As for the end game content, PvP is right out (google damncheaters). Beyond that the reports of ongoing bugs and poor quality in the end game content turns me off greatly. Having been warned I'm not even going to bother to try and suffer failure because of bad design.

 

When DDO had event breaking bugs in ANY raid at ANY level, they would just shut down the entire thing till they figured it out. Black Abbot one of the most Dynamic and Popular Raids in the game, dropping some of the most coveted loot in the game, was shut down for almost a year while they tried to solve bugs that developed. Given that they are Free to Play, that was a completely acceptable experience. Players were not complaining about the bugs, only whining about when it would be reopened.

 

Given the wide array of bugs in so many areas, following that logic, the SWTOR game release should have been delayed another 4-6 months.

 

For evaluation you take total investment for development, subtract pre order and first week sales ( not counting Subs at all ) then divide the remainder by total number of subs, and thats how much money they need to milk out of us before they can generally say 'We don't give a krap about this title anymore! Time to push and hype a new one'.

[vandana_]

I agree with the OP.

 

Fix the loot system

Fix the engine

Fix the bosses

Make the bosses and fights interesting

Fix the graphical engine (I get 60 fps in any game except TOR)

[LeonidasSith]

No kidding right? Once you start to actually look at and itemize the huge list of bugs in this game, it makes you wonder if fixing it is even the developer's goal?

 

The fixes that do come along are nothing compared to the overall scope of unfinished garbage that sits around in the game now that we are MONTHS AFTER RELEASE.

 

I'm almost certain that they just laid everybody off on the software side of the house and are raking in cash until the game dies of natural causes.

 

CEO Golden Parachute anybody?

 

I totally agree. It's mind boggling how FEW bugs are fixed each week. On top of that, some of the things supposedly fixed in the patch notes are actually not fixed. Where are the testers?

 

I can fix double double the amount of bugs they're fixing by myself, and I'm not even a programmer by trade!

 

This is a 1/4 of a billion dollar project, they need to hire WAY more people and stop outsourcing programming.

 

At this point, I believe that they've given up on fixing the game and waiting for subscription numbers to bleed out.

 

There are thousands of bugs currently in the game, many of which are massive, game breaking should have been fixed already. We're not going to wait 6 months, or 6 years for them to get fixed. Like I said, given the sheer list of bugs and the pace they're patching stuff at, there is no chance they'll fix even 25% in the next year!!! They MUST be aware of that, and not care!

Edited February 22, 2012 by LeonidasSith

[Daluu]

If this exact game...EXACT game were to have come out 7 years ago.

It would have blown WoW out of the water.

 

If any game that came out last year is compared to a game that came out 7 years ago, each one would blow any game out of the water. Of course it has better graphics, better mechanics, better everything. WHY?? Bc the devs LEARN! I know, crazy concept, hard to wrap your mind around, but the devs of the new games, learned from the mistakes the older games made.

 

The fact that there is no combat log or /roll function, along with numerous other features is troubling not only bc its frustrating but due to the fact that the devs choose to leave those features out. Bioware is a great company, there is no way they didn't think about them. There is no way they're saying right now "a /roll function?!?! Why didn't we think of that??" They choose to leave that feature out. That is troubling....

 

Edit: Same with character copies to the PTS.....either they are choosing the limit the testing of end game content, or they can't due to the horrible (free to use) engine they chose to build this game on. Either way....bad news.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Daluu

[Kingodin]

First and foremost let me assure you that when I say that SWTOR's endgame is a huge mess I am saying this from experience as myself and my guild are one of the most progressed around. We are 4/5 nightmare mode in EV already and most of us have been level 50 since late december. We have consumed all of the content SWTOR has to offer and what we have experienced is alarming.

 

The flashpoints themselves had (and continue) to have tons of bugs. While some of these have been fixed, the very fact they existed and went live in the firstplace is phenomenal. Until 1.1 3/4 of the flashpoints had unlootable chests. If you managed to beat the instance you would get nothing from most bosses which had chests instead of loot from their bodies. This bug existed for an entire month without Bioware actually addressing it which I find unbelievable. Most companies would have jumped all over a bug like this as soon as it was discovered and had a hotfix out ASAP. bioware however took weeks to finally address this massive issue. then there was the "one of your party is locked to a current flaspoint" bug. This bug made it impossible for a certain person with this bug to enter a flaspoint. The hilarious thing is the bug was able to be passed from one character to another like a disease (this was also the only way to fix it!). To get rid of this bug you would have to figure out who had the bug and have someone else create a lvl 1 alt who you invited to party to pass the bug onto it and then the alt would have it. This bug persisted for weeks! Talk about outrageous.

 

Raids were and continue to be even more of a disaster IMO. There are so many bugs and problems with both raid clusters and each individual fights I will only focus on the most disgusting of them.

 

1. In Eternity Vault there was a bug with master loot where if the Raid leader had master loot on and went to pass loot out on the corpse most of the loot would disapear! Only commndations and crafting mats and schematics would be on the corpse while set gear and other drops would simply not be there. The only way to work around this is to have to loot by random loot and everyone having to be careful not to roll on something.

 

2. Bosses would bug out and do all sorts of fun things. The worst involved Gharj. Gharj would bug out and make it so you couldnt re-enter the raid because you were stuck in combat even though noone was in zone. He would then KILL the entire raid while they were outside EV and in the fleet! The only thing you could do was to reset the instance and re-clear 20-30 min of trash.

 

3. The brand new raid Kraggas palace which just released a few days ago is hilariously bad. First off the very first boss, Bonethrasher cannot be tanked and has a very fast enrage timer which means tanks on the fight are useless. This means most guilds trying to get him in HM/NM mode HAVE to sit out tanks (and often melee DPS due to punishing mechanics) if they wanna kill him. Wats funny is the very next boss fight has two bosses which requires TWO TANKS on HM/NM mode. Better hope your guild has extra people who like sitting outside the zone and wont get to fight certain bosses! Also whoever itemized Kraggas palace has no understanding of the game or is downright lazy as all the bosses in Kraggas commonly drop loot which cannot be used by the classes it goes to (this may just be a normal mode issue though). My Bounty Hunter for example, recieved light armor pants with willpower on them ***! Does Bioware even test this stuff?

 

4. Finally the worst raid boss ever created is Soa, the final boss in EV. This may be the single most bugged raid boss I have ever seen. This encounter has so many bugs it would take me 5 pages to explain them all in detail so here are the worst ones. Just last night on hard mode we encountered these ones. After a wipe, sometimes the floor in Soa's room would be half missing and you would have to reset the raid and run back. On the final phase the tank has to kite Soa and get pillars to drop on him so his shield drops and he becomes vunerable. A number of times the pillar would hit him but his shield stayed up! Because of this our guild failed 3 times to Soa and turned what would have been a win into another wipe. We were unable to get beat him because of this garbage yet again. Finally many guilda re reporting Soa after patch 1.1 isnt even dropping loot except for mounts and craft junk. Bioware again is sitting on their hands and taking their sweet time with all of these issue.

 

 

 

I wont even get into PvP issues............but I think most of us are aware of the many problems there.

 

 

 

There are other things as well which are not quite endgame related but incredibly frustrating. Myself and thousands of others who have high end gaming rigs are getting awful performance in SWTOR. I get 10-20 FPS in places like PvP/fleet even though I have a 6970 for crying out loud! I get 50 FPS minimum on high+ settings in every other game I own (BF3, Witcher 2, Rift) but for some reason I get 10 FPS at times in SWTOR. Pathetic.

 

 

 

Lastly, SWTOR is missing the most basic of MMO features like a COMBAT LOG!. What MMO these days releases without a freaking combat log?!!!!!

 

 

 

I really wanted this game to be good and I was expecting it to at least be mediocre and be well polished but to my absolute shock SWTOR is probably the most unpolished and buggy MMO I have every played. How could a game with a budget alledgedly topping $200 Million be this bad? HOW?

 

 

 

For those of you enjoying the game and planning to stick with it, good luck to you and I applaud your patience. SWTOR isnt without its merits of course but as a whole this is the most disapointing launch I have experienced in my 15 years of MMO gaming.

 

I understand all of these are issues but man, what where you expecting a PERFECT game at launch? How about we be thankful for the things we do have... the game is playable... new content incoming and weekly patches... BE PATIENT!