Just another review..Status of SWTOR and my opinions

[Sorrowsongg]

Hi,

 

I preordered SWTOR in October and have been playing it very much after launch. There are things I like with the game and things I dislike with the game. I have decided to end my sub due to parts of the game not being of my personal taste, it’s just not fun anymore.

 

Anyway I wanted to give my opinion on what is good and what is less good and what can be improved. I don’t expect many people to care for my small opinion and flames will be raining down I’m sure but hopefully this post can lead to some creative discussion and maybe help someone looking for advice whether or not the game is for him/her.

 

Disclaimer: As English is not my native language I’m sure I have done a ton of mistakes so bare with that.

 

First a small background: I have been playing MMOs since EQ1 on and off but mostly on. I have played the following MMOs extensively: EQ1, EQ2, WOW, Vanguard, City of Heroes, Fallen Earth, Age of Conan, Aion, LoTro, Rift and now SWTOR.

 

I am a person that luckily has a very flexible work and a very understanding wife so I have been able to put in many cases more hours on online games / week than a fulltime job is.

 

After launch of SWTOR I have played it pretty much and I am now sitting with 2x LvL 50 chars (one Empire and one Republic) a 40+ char, 2x 30+ chars and a TON of chars 11-25.

 

I played all of my chars on PvP servers (different ones though) as I on the side of PvE really enjoy the thrill of PvP.

 

My character history in MMOs has always been support/healers as far as EQ1 where I played a Bard. I always leaned towards jack of all trades chars because I like complicated roles where I am able to handle different situations by growing my understanding of the class mechanics. Usually jack of all trades chars excel in soloing which is a great bonus to me as I like to push my chars soloing capabilities to the limit and trying out very hard content solo.

 

So after playing SWTOR for the almost last 2 months here are my feelings in a few areas.

 

First a short summary for people not wanting to read the wall of text:

 

I believe SWTOR feels a lot like an Apple product (and yes I do have both an imac and ipad and iphone so I appreciate apple trust me). Its shiny, it has some nice functionality, it’s so easy to use even your grandmother could use one but once you really want some depth or to fiddle with settings you are limited by the locked nature of the product. You are "boxed" into the idea from the developers in how you should play the game and enjoy the game. You either play but those rules and enjoy it because there is no other way to play it or you move on to another product with more depth but maybe less of a shining surface.

 

So here’s the breakdown:

 

Graphics: 6/10

The graphics of SWTOR is a very mixed bag. Some things looks great and I personally enjoy the slightly cartoonish look of the character models (its a bit toy story look over them in my opinion). However especially textures can look surprisingly bad for a game with this budget. There is also a lack of weather effects, night and day cycles and a large lack of compelling character armor models.

 

As many people before me have pointed out there is also a perplexing lack of available races to pick from. We can’t play anything but humanoid characters and we cannot adjust height of the chars in any way except the predetermined models. This leads to a no diverse universe of characters which I believe makes the game less interesting.

Graphics are not bad in general but fairly uninteresting imo.

Normally in every MMO I played before there would be moments where I would stop and just look at the screen and silently say "WOOW" when entering a new area in the game. In SWTOR that has happened only ones when I the first time saw Nar Shaddaas open space (or however that is spelled).

Before you flame my PC I’m having a decent PC and running this game at max settings.

 

 

Sound: 7/10

I guess it really depends on if you like star wars music or not. I’m not a hardcore fan of star wars music myself but I believe there is in general a lack of music and atmospheric effects in this game. Sound and atmospheric effects is a large factor for me on how immersed I get inside a game as my hobby is creating music. In SWTOR there is very little great atmospheric effects imo and the use of music is sparse.

The voiceover is of great quality though.

 

General game play and the world: 3/10

It might just be me but even when playing on a high population server I feel very lonely while leveling. The route SWTOR took means heavily instanced worlds with zones not linked together without loading screens popping up. This effectively separates people from each other and factions from each other. To me this makes the world feel very non real and dull. When I jump into an MMO I want to be sucked into that world, I want to feel like I’m participating in real events. For some people SWTOR might do that due to the great main story but when the world is so dead and static and swamped with tons of loading screens whenever I want to travel anyplace that just hinders my immersion a lot.

I am an explorer type of person and I love running from one side of a continent to another in an MMO just to explore, In SWTOR I get very little urge or incentive to explore at all and I’m very tightly held in place by the designers idea of what I should do next in the game.

To me there feels like a barrier between the game world and me that hinders my immersion. Its far more in SWTOR than in most other MMOs I have played and I guess that’s why I’m not having as fun as I expected.

When I started playing EQ1, Vanguard or even WOW I was sucked into their universe and really felt like I was there. When I started playing SWTOR and leveled up noticing the massive amounts of loading screens, same orbital station design, same spaceport design, the long corridors of many zones (Nar Shadaa for example) etc then it’s a lot harder for me to get immersed.

 

Quests/Story: 9/10 (first char) 3/10 (additional chars)

The strength of SWTOR lies in its story but this is also its Achilles heal. As it is so story driven it boarders onto the realms of a single player RPG. Like all RPGs its a great play through the first time but the second or third time its not that interesting anymore. Sure you can experience other classes main quest lines but the fact that there is literally at any given time only one planet suitable for your leveling experience means that you will experience the same exact locations and the same side quests when leveling up a second or third character. In every MMO I have played before there has been a choice of areas to level up in but in SWTOR its not. SWTOR is very much is a railway track approach where you go to this station, then to this station and never do you have the choice or you actually get encouraged to explore outside of the tracks. The fact that the main story line is generally very good, is different for all classes and can be completed solo makes grouping less encouraging.

 

 

Combat mechanics: 5/10

When I tried to think about what MMO SWTORs combat mostly resembles me of I can’t help but think its closest to City of Heroes. SWTOR uses multiple enemies of "critter" difficulty clustered together with the occasional lieutenant or boss. The mobs placing is normally very static, they don’t move much, pats are rare etc. This is exactly the same setup as in City of Heroes. I guess its designed to make the player feel more heroe-like when plowing through armies of "critter" and maybe some of you do. I however find it a bit boring as the "critter" mobs are no challenge at all and their placing and lack of movement makes them feel like you are fighting some dead objects. Very rarely do groups agro together which makes pulling and management of your surroundings very much not needed.

 

In SWTOR every class I tried out so far gets many abilities. You usually end up with almost all four ability bars full. This I really like as the cheer number of abilities makes combat more enjoyable as you have to make a choice on what to use and when.

 

Grouping/Raids: 4/10

As SWTOR is aimed toward the more casual solo players there is no need to really group for anything until end game. This takes away much of the social aspect of the game imo. In endgame there is no LFG tool which I actually like as it then takes some effort to start a group but I can understand the dislikes of other players for this missing feature. The problem with endgame is that it is too easy and limited. There is not enough group/raid content and generally an average guild with average people can beat most if not all the content released so far fairly easy. Again I feel this does not help to make the game interesting. For minimal input from your side you can get maximum reward in terms of completion of content and loot. In my world the ideal MMO game should not be possible to complete end game on less than 2 months after release. There should be a much steeper curve that really rewards skilled player’s imo.

 

Crafting: 2/10

SWTOR did two things right with crafting I believe and that is the companion crafting and the idea that you can get upgrade recepies from "disenchanting". Unfortunately that is about all they made right. The fact that most trade skills are totally worthless to use for either upgrading gear or making money due to the fact that Biowares gear system at level 1-49 resolves around upgradable moddable orange gear is a disaster. This game clearly is not a great place to be in if you love crafting and player economy.

 

PvP: 6/10 (warzones) 1/10 (world PvP)

I believe a few things are right in PvP. First of all I believe the class balance is decent even so close after release. Yes Sorcs might sometimes be strong and there was a need for a toned down damage of Operatives but generally class balance is fairly solid. Also the hutball WZ I found very fun. I believe that WZ you either love or hate but I found it fairly fun and refreshing.

SWTOR also have avoided the healers are OP place that many others MMOs have sank into

(Rift comes to mind). In SWTOR having heals in your team don’t make your team auto-win. Playing a healer myself I enjoyed that as it was a much harder time heal in SWTOR than in for example rift both regarding targeting, lack of macros and cheer healing output compared to DPS.

SWTOR also has a nice tweak in the guard mechanic even if 50% might be slightly over the top in protection.

Due to the heavily instanced theampark world and railtrack quest scenarios there is very very little world PvP going on except for on the designated PvP planet Ilum. When I leveled up two chars to 50 in the top3 most heavily populated PvP servers in the EU I had fewer encounters that resulted in world PvP than I can count on my fingers. First of all this game seems to be designed to keep factions separate by heavy instancing and zoning and on top of that once I encountered opposing factions they often just tried to ran off or ignored to jump me even if I was fighting a boss mob and I was at 30% HP.

 

Gear progression: 3/10

I really believe the orange moddable gear is a double edged sword. Its a great system in some ways opening up for possibilities to reuse gear for many levels but at the same time it takes away much of the excitement of looting and of crafting.

PVE Operations gear progress is in my opinion to easy and PvP gear progression is just rewarding time spend PvPing with a RNG element attached. I do not have the magic formula to fix these issues but generally I believe it goes far too fast to get the gear. Minimum effort and welfare epics I guess you could say.

The fact that the end game PvP gear is not fully moddable also makes it so that every person will look exactly the same. This in combination with the fact that every person could only make a humanoid char makes the diversity very limited and boring.

 

Functionality/UI/Macros/settings etc: 2/10

There are very many basic things missing in SWTOR that I have gotten used to in other MMOs. There is no moddable UI, I can’t even resize it..No combat log, no macros, no mouse over healing etc etc.

Some of these lacks of functions I can actually applaud. As I’m not a huge macro or add-on fan I liked that everyone actually had to play the game without needing to use third party software or relying on macros. The lack of customization of the UI is just plain stupid though as it really makes the game less enjoyable to play.

 

 

Performance/bugs: 5/10

As we have read in countless threads and its inline with my own experience also this game has some serious performance issues. I believe the number of bugs are not very large and acceptable even if some are game breaking as this is early after release. Bugs I would not worry much about as they will be nailed out at some period. The performance of the game is however under expectations for a game with this budget. Especially performance with many characters onscreen is very low compared to other games. Because SWTOR is not that good looking compared to for example RIFT it must be due to limitations/bad coding of the engine. This should improve over time but it’s a jolly bad sign that they are experiencing so much performance issues with a new game like this on a fairly unproven engine.

 

So that’s it now I written my thoughts out

 

Flame on

 

Cheers

//Kamasuthra

Edited February 9, 2012 by Sorrowsongg

[Dandroidz]

I love this review - you really nailed everything on the head buddy. Such a shame too this game looked like so much fun but after dragging myself through 50 levels of buggy and uninventive MMO mechanics I found myself really hankering for the old KOTOR games where I could enjoy the story without having to do ******, buggy MMO combat and long boring walks with companion characters who would go weeks without a single conversation.

 

And also I played a PvP server 1-50 and never even got in one real fight. What a joke...

[BOLTgamer]

You know your review sucks? It's not the points, the scores are too bad, 3 is unplayable, 6 is bad, every bad thing on that last should be a 6

[pipda]

You know your review sucks? It's not the points, the scores are too bad, 3 is unplayable, 6 is bad, every bad thing on that last should be a 6

 

I was just thinking the only well plotted and written reviews from posters are in general negative. How come we don't see positive reviews of the same quality?

 

Would it be that anyone smart enough to right a review with any quality also knows a quality game...

[SithEnvoy]

I was just thinking the only well plotted and written reviews from posters are in general negative. How come we don't see positive reviews of the same quality?

 

Would it be that anyone smart enough to right a review with any quality also knows a quality game...

 

Cause if we liked the game we wouldnt be writing reviews in the forum. We would be playing it.

[Sorrowsongg]

You know your review sucks? It's not the points, the scores are too bad, 3 is unplayable, 6 is bad, every bad thing on that last should be a 6

 

Well that really depends on how you measure the scale. For me a 4-6 would be average and a 3 fairly bad. Unfortunately modern videogames look to be reviewed in such a way so they distort the scale and the medium is now 7-8 of score ..

[Mephismo]

Seems like you burned out on every game you played.

At least it kept you entertained enough to level two toons to 50.

Great thing about these games is you can come back later if things improve.

Have fun playing something else.

[Uzziel]

Thank you for taking the time to write down this very well thought out and detailed review. You hit many issues head on. I to have been following this game for some time and it has been and overall disappointment for me as well.

 

Probley will not be renewing my 90 day sub. Still on the fence atm.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Uzziel

[Sorrowsongg]

Thank you for taking the time to write down this very well thought out and detailed review. You hit many issues head on. I myself have been following this game for some time and it has been and overall disappointment for me as well.

 

Probley will not be renewing my 90 day sub. Still on the fence atm.

 

Your welcome had to get my thoughts out about this game

[rgolch]

Sorry to break it to you, but nobody really cares about your opinion.

[Marroc]

Sorry to break it to you, but nobody really cares about your opinion.

 

^ this

[Sorrowsongg]

Sorry to break it to you, but nobody really cares about your opinion.

 

I actually wrote in my review that i expected noone would care so you are not really "breaking it to me"

 

Wanted to get this off my chest anyways..

[Rahl_Windsong]

I agree pretty much whole heart with the OP. As a very long time fan of Bioware it is a mystery to me that they actually developed SWTOR because other then the voice acted story aspect of the game, the rest of it is NOT up to their usual standards.

 

I own pretty much every game Bioware has made since Baldur's Gate was new and all I can say is Bioware must have farmed out the development to some other developer because no way they would have released a flagship game like this one with little or no inovation beyond the story aspect.

[Tallymon]

When I jump into an MMO I want to be sucked into that world, I want to feel like I’m participating in real events. For some people SWTOR might do that due to the great main story but when the world is so dead and static and swamped with tons of loading screens whenever I want to travel anyplace that just hinders my immersion a lot.

I am an explorer type of person and I love running from one side of a continent to another in an MMO just to explore, In SWTOR I get very little urge or incentive to explore at all and I’m very tightly held in place by the designers idea of what I should do next in the game.

To me there feels like a barrier between the game world and me that hinders my immersion. Its far more in SWTOR than in most other MMOs I have played and I guess that’s why I’m not having as fun as I expected.

When I started playing EQ1, Vanguard or even WOW I was sucked into their universe and really felt like I was there. When I started playing SWTOR and leveled up noticing the massive amounts of loading screens, same orbital station design, same spaceport design, the long corridors of many zones (Nar Shadaa for example) etc then it’s a lot harder for me to get immersed.

 

Glad others out there feel exactly the same way as me. I can agree with and have expressed every single sentiment that you put down here. Just waiting for something else to take me away~ SWTOR is not going to give you that feeling no matter how much content is added or bugs are fixed, this is one of those things that just isn't really fixable without a complete and total renovation of the engine and game design.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Tallymon

[Reaperchris]

I actually wrote in my review that i expected noone would care so you are not really "breaking it to me"

 

Wanted to get this off my chest anyways..

 

Well we seriously don't care and every day there are at least 5 of these. If you want to review go to Idk lets say... A review site?

[Parali]

Hello,

 

Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. All feedback, both positive and negative, is valuable to us as we make improvements in the game.

 

We encourage you to add your thoughts to the Suggestion Compliation thread, where that conversation is already in progress

 

For a more focused suggestion topic, you might want to try posting in our Suggestion Box forum.

 

For bug-related issues, there is also the Ultimate Bug List thread.

 

We will be closing this thread now. We thank you for your cooperation!