Post Launch Blues

[cipher_nemo]

There are three reason why I'm still here:

1. TOR is still fun with alts and their storylines for regular PvE questing.
   
2. My guild is fully invested in TOR. I also have fun doing things like ops, pvp, and hard mode runs with them.
   
3. I have some faith in an MMO as big as TOR being improved and built upon in future updates and expansions.
   

 

But there are many reason why I'd rather not play.

 

Executive summary...

1. TOR endgame is boring and repetitive. The end-game gear actually worth anything is a total grind to get, be it through PvE Ops and Hard Mode Flashpoints or PvP. Worse, the gear isn't aesthetically pleasing.
   .
   
2. Bioware has a system that discourages grouping. From no LFG tools to ops/hard/nightmare mode lock outs, buggy instancing issues, and cumbersome UI, grouping is punished.
   .
   
3. Many of the tweaking/balance changes and bug fixes so far end up f'ing up something else. Case in point: Illum PvP, 50-bracket PvP, Eternity Vault, client stability issues, etc.
   .
   
4. UI is still gimped. I'm waiting for this promised UI overhaul, but I don't have much faith in Bioware since the first UI is atrocious. Yes, the UI works, but that's like saying a Ford Pinto with a rebuilt engine in 2012 serves its intended purpose. Who would want to drive that?
   .
   
5. Over restrictive, iron-fisted forum moderation that shoots out warnings and deletes post for silly or debatable things, yet doesn't really punish many of the troublesome people/repeat offenders here. Let's make this a friendly forum that punishes the real troublemakers, not users at random.
   .
   
6. Lag. Teleport-walking, skills don't trigger immediately when I press a key or click on them, and ability inductions get reset/stutter sometimes even when not getting hit. Players jumping or moving into unusual areas also makes them look like they fall or are stuck on everyone else's screen, when in fact they're in a totally different spot on theirs. And this happens frequently, even when the server population is low. Blame it on the unpolished engine or the servers, but whatever it is, it's annoying as all heck.

 

The details...

1. Coordinating operations is awkward and discouraging. I've run three separate attempts on Eternity Vault so far, and my guild has made it all the way to the end boss. We're not a "raiding" guild, but we enjoy to stretch ourselves and tackling all content from PvE and PvP to hard mode flashpoints and ops. What needs to be improved with ops:
   .
   
   • Because the damn thing resets every Tuesday we may never get a chance to finish it. Give us the option to have it reset every Tuesday or hold on to our boss clearing locks. We do one once a week, so if we don't complete it, it will be wiped by the time we come back together. This means we may never get to finish it one time.
     
   • If an operation is left for a few hours or more the trash mobs respawn in between the bosses. Please fix this so that the speeder is always there if at least the party made it's way to the second boss or later.
     
   • Fix the game-breaking bugs. We've had to reset an unbelievable number of times to get past all of the bugs in Eternity Vault. From the final boss' platforms not spawning to players getting stuck in terrain and the party perma stuck in combat.
     
   • The initial turrets are not harder to clear than any boss in the game except SOA.
     
   • Don't make players go through two loading screens upon death. Spawn them next to the speeder in Eternity Vault instead of outside in the station. And place a medical droid there for repairs.
     
   • Let PUGers help groups complete operations without being locked to their boss locks. Prevent them from looting if you like, but don't penalize people for helping others.
     
   • Stop punishing melee DPS characters in operations.
     
   • There's no reason for my guild to run 16-man ops. The rewards from the chests/bosses are no different than 8-man ops, yet they're more difficult and require more work to complete. Why is that? Very few people want to run 16-man ops as a result. There needs to be better gear rewarded from killing bosses in 16-man operations.
     

.

[*]Please give us our high textures for use in the game world, not just in conversations. Many of us have high-end systems capable of rendering many high-res textures at once. This was partially in-game, in during beta, then removed. We should have control over showing them or not. And if they're not fixed/ready yet, why the heck not? It's coming up on two months after launch and the high-res textures are not here yet.

.

[*]Give us an option to disable smoke/fog/snow (ie: particle effects). These lag our PCs like mad even though we have high end systems with enthusiast-grade video cards in SLI or CrossfireX. But these particle effects are so bloated and clunky that they drop our framerate like a hot potato.

.

[*]We're still waiting for a UI revamp. I'm sick and tired of not being able to place the radar where I like, move my quiskslot bars where I like, move panels (ie: inventory, mission log, etc.) where I like, or have more than two panels open at once. I'd also like to scale the UI. It's way to overblown since I game at 2560x1600. We also need the ability to save and load UI layouts so that we can load them for all of our characters without having to tediously align things over and over again.

.

[*]Voice overs get stale after taking at least one character to end game. I'm tired of hearing my character choose a different verbal response than the text selection I made. It seems like Bioware cheated a bit here and recorded a bunch of standard replies to everything.

.

[*]Fix and balance PvP.

.

• The option to bracket level 50s into their own queue has resulting in many level 50 Republic characters not wanting to PvP anymore on my server (Mind Trick). So now the Empire players suffer by having almost nothing but Huttball when they queue up. And the Republic level 50s get destroyed in a vast majority of games because the Republic side is much more casual for PvPing, without all of the expertise gear the Empire side has. It's just unbalanced. That means it's not fun for either side.
  
• Rework Illum. After the last changes Illum PvP is something hardly any one wants to do. In fact, we've gotten around the system to do our weeklies and dailies by co-operating with friendly Empire guilds. We wait over in an unused area together, and kill an ops worth of them, then they kill an ops worth of us, then we wait 3 minutes and repeat the process. Devs approved this but it's boring. It's the only thing done on Republic side for Illum anymore.
  
• Fix PvP bags. I often get nothing but tokens while others get a flood of gear. This randomness is silly. Please balance it out.
  

.

[*]Not much to do after level 50. It's just a grind for end-game gear which seems to take forever. Dailies are boring and too few and far in-between. For PvE I have only a few on Illum and a few on Belsavis since I don't want to group for dailies. And since so many people are at end-game right now, getting them done is sometimes a mess since that's where all of the PvE players are. That brings me to another point...

.

[*]Bugged mobs. They're all over the place. You can attack them but shortly after they reset as if they're anti-exploit code is kicking in immediately instead of after a delay.

.

[*]Fix broken missions and quests. For example, I was unable to turn in the Alderaan bonus series on my main character. It was stuck there in my log. I finally dumped it but now I can't pick it up again. Broken. As a completionist this bugs the hell out of me. I have no idea where my character stands on the Alderaan bonus missions.

.

[*]Please give us key bindings/mappings for target node (ie: target a chest), use node (ie: use chest), and target markers (ie: put a flame icon over current target). Using the mouse for these task is tedious; ultimately soul crushing.

.

[*]Lighting in-game. Almost two months after launch and we still have those annoying green/yellow rays of color/light interfering with our view in the game world. This is really bad on Tatooine, but exists almost everywhere. And this is even worse when zoomed out 100%. Why hasn't this major graphical bug been fixed yet? EVERYONE I've talked with has experienced this as well.

.

[*]Mounting up on a speeder is odd. Sometimes it's laggy, sometimes not. But if I start to move too early when mounting up it kicks me off the speeder.

.

[*]The /follow command is still buggy for following other players. And it would be nice to /follow a node as well (ie: a chest or flashing quest item on the ground).

.

[*]We're supposed to get a guild bank soon, but we don't have it yet. Still, that's too little too late. We also need some sort of social hub for guilds such as their own fleet or ship.

.

[*]End-game gear armor artwork is awkward looking at best and atrocious at worst.

.

[*]My mouse cursor jumps around sometimes meaning that I'll be holding down the right mouse button to move my camera and then *bam", the cursor is moved all the way to one edge of the screen. It happens infrequently, but very annoying nonetheless.

.

[*]My client is continually forced into a fake full-screen mode (ie: a window mode with no borders). I want to run in true DirectX full screen all the time for performance reasons. The client switches this on me whenever I exit the galaxy map upon traveling to a new location. To fix it I have to alt-tab out of the client and then alt-tab back into the client.

.

[*]Cursor is a just a slight bit laggy when vertical sync is enabled. I think this has to do with your client incorrectly handling a hardware-driven cursor when SLI is enabled for multiple GPUs on one PC. No problems when vertical sync is disabled. I need vertical sync to keep my video card from rendering excessive frames that my monitor can't show. Without vertical sync I'd seen "screen tearing" and my GPUs would run hotter than needed.

.

[*]No option to lock cursor to the boundaries of a full-screen client. I run three monitors. I use the other monitors for viewing statuses like looking at a map in a browser or having Ventrilo (voice-over-IP add) chat window open, etc. But I don't want to accidentally click off the main screen when trying to click on an ability slotted in one of the side quickslot bars. This would be solved by adding an option to force cursor within the client window when the client has active focus. This would also be solved by reworking the UI so that I can move my quickslot bars wherever I want. That brings me to another point...

.

[*]Alt-tabbing back into the game client when it was minimized takes FOREVER! I am shown a loading screen while textures and models are reloaded. Why do they have to reload when we alt-tab out and back into the client? Please buffer/cache them instead. This makes switching back and forth between the client and other applications a royal pain in the you-know-what. Is there a way to give us an option to prevent this, or is this a failing of your game engine that needs to be fixed?

.

[*]And finally, not related to the game but rather the forums: the forum moderation is all over the place in terms of what's acceptable and what's not. I get dinged for silly reasons such as "spam" for posting a message that's too short, yet people all over the forums are pretty much degrading each by calling names and using derogatory language, yet their posts are still there. Either you run the forums with an iron first and everyone gets penalized for violations or you only deal with the extreme cases or repeat offenders. Right now your moderation is a mixed bag. I'm so sick of it that I rarely post on the forums anymore. Your mods are killing the community there. Right now we have honest people not posting and offensive jerks posting everywhere because they don't fear warnings. Please address this by going one direction or the other, not a spotty mix of both.

 

Additional items added in replies...

1. From Pourekos: The GTN. I am sure you got a lot of feedback about it, so all I will suggest as an important first step is a) make it so we can shift/alt/control/whatever + click any item to search for it without going through menu after menu first and b) make it easier to break items into stacks, even within the inventory itself.
   .
   
2. From Pourekos: Target of target frame. This is of extreme use in both pve and pvp in a number of different scenarios.
   .
   
3. From Pourekos: Clearer UI in terms of buffs/debuffs (especially on the target) and procs. For someone playing for example on a 15inch laptop, it is extremely difficult to be able to see when you got a proc and an ability became available or if your buff/debuff on a target is actually there or about to fall, especially when there is another one from your AC/spec present.

 

Let me just remind you Bioware, and our community: I still love TOR. I wouldn't be here making a list, giving my feedback, and posing possible solutions if I didn't.

 

Bottom line:

 

Bioware, let's innovate instead of just copying every other developer. If you can't make an exact copy of functionality in the more popular MMOs, then stop trying. Build upon what the MMO developer community has already done to stand out from the crowd of MMOs. You don't need to re-invent the wheel, but you do need to build a better wheel. You started with the interactive, voiced-over storyline, but it seems like you just sort of gave up after that.

 

Also it's time to ramp up your quality control and polish updates instead of introducing new bugs. There's always going to be bugs, but there doesn't always have to be blatant, rampant bugs like we have now. Just a single run of some flashpoints, ops, and other content in QA would easily catch some of these obvious bugs. Why isn't this happening?

Edited February 8, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[Frigidman]

Love your very well written and heart felt posting. Its a good read, and touches many issues I too see with the game.

 

I too am eager to see what is in store, but day to day play of the game, all the little glitches and issues are really beginning to irritate me as well. And patch after patch it seems none of the issues bugging me out, are being fixed. Or they introduce something new to my list of annoyances.

 

Game is still fresh, and they have a mountain of things to iron out. Daunting amount of issues.

 

My main one, which you mentioned too ... I just hope they fire their current UI team, and hire some professionals with real world experience. Its clear the UI team they had for all their prior games, and for the UI made in beta, are just not up to the task of what a MMO UI team needs to be.

 

Oh well. Great read! Thanks for posting it.

[cipher_nemo]

Thanks, Frigidman!

 

Game is still fresh, and they have a mountain of things to iron out. Daunting amount of issues.

 

Yup, tons of alts to enjoy, tons of new places to explore. I explored probably most of the Republic content from my main character, but tons more to explore on my Empire characters. I just wish I'd feel more inclined to play my alts. I never seem to get enough time for them since the end-game level 50 grind for gear is slow and tedious.

 

My main one, which you mentioned too ... I just hope they fire their current UI team, and hire some professionals with real world experience. Its clear the UI team they had for all their prior games, and for the UI made in beta, are just not up to the task of what a MMO UI team needs to be.

 

Amen! The UI feels far more like a console game than a PC-based MMO.

[Pourekos]

I was going to make my own post, but I believe this one is good so I am adding my suggestions here. As a disclaimer, this is no QQ, I have a sub going on for after the free month and everything, all I am doing is providing feedback on QOL issues that I believe affect a lot of people including myself (other than bugs obviously).

 

1. The GTN. I am sure you got a lot of feedback about it, so all I will suggest as an important first step is a) make it so we can shift/alt/control/whatever + click any item to search for it without going through menu after menu first and b) make it easier to break items into stacks, even within the inventory itself.

 

2. Target of target frame. This is of extreme use in both pve and pvp in a number of different scenarios.

 

3. Clearer UI in terms of buffs/debuffs (especially on the target) and procs. For someone playing for example on a 15inch laptop, it is extremely difficult to be able to see when you got a proc and an ability became available or if your buff/debuff on a target is actually there or about to fall, especially when there is another one from your AC/spec present.

 

I can't comment about all the things mentioned since I am casually leveling up, however the 3 issues I mentioned above are already becoming obvious.

 

Many thanks for reading this.

[cipher_nemo]

1. The GTN. (...) a) make it so we can shift/alt/control/whatever + click any item to search for it without going through menu after menu first and b) make it easier to break items into stacks, even within the inventory itself.

 

2. Target of target frame.

 

3. Clearer UI in terms of buffs/debuffs (especially on the target) and procs.

 

I completely agree. Thanks for adding these!

[cipher_nemo]

On that note Pourekos, I added your points to the OP.