To put it gently, I agree with these guys..

[Yukondoit]

I've never really understood the argument that because a lot of people say it, it must be true. A lot of people say a lot of things.

 

I, personally, don't know anybody who's markedly unhappy with the game in its present state--including me. Who's right? I don't know. I really just don't see the problems that other people complain about. What I see are trivial issues, where small adjustments here and there would bring large benefit. The core of the game is, I think, very solid.

 

Ditto.

 

SWTOR is great. It's young. It'll mature. And I have a feeling that there'll be a lot of features that'll be implemented that will ensure a strong, healthy player base. I begrudge no one who stops playing this game. It's a game. People have different tastes.

 

But I do begrudge the forum trolls trying to convince everyone else to see things their way.

[zudzud]

I agree with pretty much everything. When I first started playing I was impressed with the class story and the voice acting but after a while it turned out to be nothing but makeup on a pig. Sure all quests were voice acted but they all also were uninspired "kill 10" or "collect 5" quests.

[kidbs]

I completely agree with the article. I've said all along that this game feels much like DCUO did. It was fun while leveling up but then once you hit "end-game" the serious lack of depth starts to set in and the game becomes stale quickly.

 

At this point I'm just waiting for my sub to run out. I'm actually having more fun playing a free to play game at the moment and it has much more depth than swtor. It looks like GW2 is the next big hope.

[Loupe]

Well as I stated I hadn't been keeping up with them for some time. However lately I get the inclination to see what they've been up to, what games they're looking into. They get invited to every beta of pretty much anything apply to. So.. That means something to me regarding their legitimacy, anyways.

 

These two brothers are studying to be in game design. They have evaluated the pros and cons in various titles, versus their vision of achieving perfection, for years. Well Keen specifically as Graev is more the hard core gamer.

 

GW2 is on their radar but I was so turned off by the first, I dunno if I can get excited about it, but I'm looking at it more seriously.

 

Given my history with online gaming. I want a title that is dynamic enough to be a living community in the server and the forum. To be engaging and interactive to the point you develop a relationship with your character, like you would expect in any good RPG. I haven't seen this for many many years. The future of MMORPG game design is not the sticks and carrots, not the beauty of land or sky, but depth of character and community building.

 

Those lucky enough to get into a gaming group of friends, develop a decent organized guild and have enjoyed a social connection to the game from the beginning, count yourself lucky. For my experience spamming general on planets, fleet, form the ship, and every dinky space station instance.. When I needed a group, some help.. nothing, and silence for a vast majority of time wasted in the asking. Occasionally I'd get lucky myself, or see someone else in the same boat and jump in with them.

 

I'll spare you the insanity of what it takes to have installed this game on my system, it works.. So I can forgive them that.. Now.. I'll spare you the story of being stuck under a floor for two days after a patch, requiring 4 tickets and 4 phone calls to get resolved. I won't bother to express the multiple bugs and glitches causing the game to be broken to the point of disgust among not only myself but multiple parties and situations.

 

If its good to you, good for you~! It's not good to me.. Krapy game or just my luck, I can't say..

[mSum]

I like SWTOR a lot, but the blogger has a point. In its current state, SWTOR is a "three-monther". I'll be putting my sub on hold soon and playing other games until more content is released.

 

I don't see this as a failure for BW at all. We got in early, played the piss out of the content created and basically finished the game. When new content is released, I'll reactivate my sub and play the new content....sort of like when a console game drops new DLC.

 

I think the angry people are actively searching for a life consuming experience like WoW was for far too many folks. Now they're disappointed that they finished the content and have to go back to reality for a little while.

Edited February 24, 2012 by mSum

[Quraswren]

I completely agree with the article. I've said all along that this game feels much like DCUO did. It was fun while leveling up but then once you hit "end-game" the serious lack of depth starts to set in and the game becomes stale quickly.

 

I always find this statement funny and though it's off topic.

 

If you are an MMO players at all, What did you expect to have or see at endgame?

[furiousferret]

The one thing I have learned about gaming is that many times you want to like a game but mentally you dont want to. When I bought MW3, Cata, WAR, Tribes II (Tribes was the best game ever, Pissed off Ewoks represent!) I was excited to buy the game, but deep down inside I was burned out from gaming. All those games I didnt think were bad, I just did not want to play them.

 

Many of these opinions are just from guys that probably need to get away from mmo's for awhile. My guess is alot of people have been playing WOW for years and wanted a new experience, but SWTOR is not a new experience over wow. Its another mmo, which plays like all the other mmo's.

 

I like the game, and some of the criticism I find is from burnt out gamers.

[grueber]

These guys are actually harsher than I am. They listed most of my major complaints.

 

I didn't think the class story was that bad, though it definitely is too "templated".

 

I have low hopes of swtor being significantly improved. Some of the issues go directly to the game design/engine (uninspired and repetitive world/zone design, ridiculously poor ability to handle large number of people in combat).

 

If this is the best Bioware/EA could do after 6-7 years of development the game engine/server is not going to suddenly improve.

 

It is what it is.

[NDiggy]

Well as I stated I hadn't been keeping up with them for some time. However lately I get the inclination to see what they've been up to, what games they're looking into. They get invited to every beta of pretty much anything apply to. So.. That means something to me regarding their legitimacy, anyways.

 

I could get my dog into any beta. Its not hard and really says nothing about anyone's legitimacy. I've gotten press credentials to get into E3 before and I've never written an article or blogged. The internet is an amazing thing. It really sounds like you just googled up an article that fit with your views and posted it here on the forums so you could proclaim to everyone "HEY LOOK, THESE GUYS AGREE WITH ME AND THEY'RE ON THE INTERNETS SO THEY MUST BE LEGIT!" Honestly, you said these guys are brothers and all I can keep picturing now are the two brothers from Metalocalypse that tried to blackmail the band.

[Aloro]

Ah, what the heck. I'll chime in.

 

Questing

 

Too repetitive

At first the story disguises the grind, but when you’ve reached the 5th planet giving you the same cliche story arcs, it’s hard to suspend disbelief. The writing for a lot of the quests was bad.

Too boring, maintaining a very generic feel.

 

This wasn't my experience at all. On the one hand, I absolutely agree that every MMO is by nature extremely repetitive, and every quest in every MMO is a minor variation on a VERY small number of options (kill x, collect x, escort x, etc). On the other hand, the narrative in SWTOR makes me actually care about the context. So I'm not out slaying x monsters, but instead am trying to save a village. To me, that makes a meaningful difference. Regardless, I don't see this complaint as being any more valid in SWTOR than in every other MMO ever made, and honestly it seems much less valid here, to me.

 

Replayability

 

I have no desire to make alts. Maybe this falls under questing. I can’t do it again.

Only a few of the classes felt fun or interesting, and the mirrors were a little too obvious. I can’t, for example, go play a Juggernaut after playing a Guardian. They are the same thing.

 

Ergh. OK, there are two major problems with the way he's approaching this. First, replayability is based in part upon total amount of content available, and in part on your chances to experience that content in different ways (e.g. alts). Second, he's completely ignoring all narrative and only talking about gameplay; that's the only sense in which a Juggernaut and Guardian are similar. This is a story-based game, so YES, the story is meant to be part of the replayability. If you don't care about story, fair enough. This is a bit like test driving a Porsche then complaining that you don't really like steering things.

 

Having said all of that, I agree that this is a valid perspective. I just don't happen to share it at all.

 

Crafting

 

In many ways, pointless. Only Biochem and maybe Cybertech are useful.

No meaningful connection between players. Crafting is pretty much a solo experience.

 

In many ways, pointless? No more so than crafting in every other MMO ever made. It's always optional. There are always paths to get gear without crafting. This is a ridiculous complaint.

 

As to the lack of meaningful connection between players, that's a social issue, not a crafting one. If he meant to suggest that he'd like to see some increased interdependence between crafts, that'd be a valid viewpoint, but he didn't say that.

 

Dungeons

 

All but the first dungeon felt very boring to me. I couldn’t bring myself to do them more than once.

They didn’t have that replayability factor that WoW dungeons had — I could run Scholomance a dozen times but I cringe thinking about running a SWTOR dungeon.

 

These are very subjective statements, and as such are fair enough. The above are true for Keen. They're not true for me though. Since there's no objective component to this section whatsoever, there's little to say except that I disagree. I've found the flashpoints to be fun by and large.

 

End-game PvE and PvP

 

Gear treadmills aren’t fun for me.

I don’t like the Expertise stat at all.

 

If you don't like gear treadmills, then your views are completely inconsistent. WoW has gear treadmills; SWTOR really does not. You can get gear pretty quickly and easily here; there's no appreciable grind at any point.

 

As for the expertise stat, fair enough. I agree that it creates a barrier to new players joining PvP, which I think probably isn't desirable. I also prefer PvP to be more skill-based so prefer a level playing field. Expertise prevents a level playing field.

 

How the game feels

 

Combat feels off for me as a Jedi Knight. There’s a disconnect somewhere. Maybe a delay, maybe a GCD issue, maybe the animations.

It’s not quite “WoW in space” because I think SWTOR falls short of what WoW achieved in the ‘feel’ department. For what it is, WoW has a lot of depth (which might sound like an oxymoron because themeparks do not have a lot of depth) and SWTOR did not capture the player in any sense of “world”. The game actually felt closer to Warhammer Online’s truncated questing hubs.

 

I understand what he's saying here, but again, this is entirely subjective. He felt that combat didn't flow well. Fair enough. He felt that WoW immersed him more in the world. I question how this could possibly be true without massive nostalgia blinding one to the facts, but ok, it's his subjective opinion. There's nothing to say about someone's objective opinion. You agree or you disagree. I disagree, again. I found nothing about WoW's setting immersive; I find the emphasis on story in SWTOR very immersive.

 

Community

 

There isn’t a community at all. This feels like a single-player game. I rarely saw another player while leveling. People are just crammed into the station.

No one needs to communicate with or interact with other players on any level.

Players do not have to rely on each other.

Essentially there is no “massively multiplayer” feel.

 

A person's perception of the community in SWTOR is strongly linked to several things, including server choice, guild membership, and playstyle. Personally, I always felt WoW's community to be a bit of a bad joke, insofar as most interactions I saw consisted of people being jerks to each other, along with far too many Chuck Norris jokes. That's just my subjective experience though, and I don't claim that it applies to anyone but me.

 

As to not needing to communicate or interact with other players on any level... first, that's nonsense. You need to communicate and interact with other players to engage in operations and flashpoints (if done at level), heroic missions (at level, at least sometimes), and PvP. But beyond that, let's compare the requirements to group here with the game Keen prefers: WoW. In WoW, you can solo to the endgame and never interact with another player at all in any way. Yes, you'd have to skip content there, just like you'd have to skip content here to avoid all players. This is frankly a stupid comment; insights of this nature are what compelled me to stop reading Keen and Graev's blog. I simply don't respect their capacity for reasoning, nor do I appreciate the way they try to mask clear bias as some sort of objectivity.

 

***

 

I am NOT saying that this is a perfect game; it isn't. I just happen not to agree with anything Keen wrote there. I think it was poorly thought through and entirely subjective article that provided no meaningful insight whatsoever.

 

Your mileage may vary.

[Tiaa]

This is how Bioware should be answering questions and what their fans should look like:

 

 

Bioware created the "haters" themselves with their secrets and hype.

 

Now deal with it!

 

For two more weeks until my sub is expired!

[Yukondoit]

These guys are actually harsher than I am. They listed most of my major complaints.

 

I didn't think the class story was that bad, though it definitely is too "templated".

 

I have low hopes of swtor being significantly improved. Some of the issues go directly to the game design/engine (uninspired and repetitive world/zone design, ridiculously poor ability to handle large number of people in combat).

 

If this is the best Bioware/EA could do after 6-7 years of development the game engine/server is not going to suddenly improve.

 

It is what it is.

 

I'd push back on that. While you're right that TOR isn't going to "suddenly improve," that's not really saying anything groundbreaking. MMO's never "suddenly" get better. They grow over time.

 

To claim that BioWare won't be able to improve on TOR as time goes on is just flat out wrong.

[Develeron]

Guys why are you even trying.

Making these guys admit or even realise there are some very major flaws with this game is as easy as making a 13 year old girl understand that justin bieber sucks.

 

Fanboys will always be fanboys, and they will never accept facts.

 

nuff said really.

[Loupe]

I could get my dog into any beta. Its not hard and really says nothing about anyone's legitimacy. I've gotten press credentials to get into E3 before and I've never written an article or blogged. The internet is an amazing thing. It really sounds like you just googled up an article that fit with your views and posted it here on the forums so you could proclaim to everyone "HEY LOOK, THESE GUYS AGREE WITH ME AND THEY'RE ON THE INTERNETS SO THEY MUST BE LEGIT!" Honestly, you said these guys are brothers and all I can keep picturing now are the two brothers from Metalocalypse that tried to blackmail the band.

 

Your dog must be awesomesauce!

 

I do read their stuff a few times a year.. and they're more like clones to be honest and some impurities got into Graev, we think.. He's the special one..

[Genkin]

This is how Bioware should be answering questions and what their fans should look like:

 

 

Bioware created the "haters" themselves with their secrets and hype.

 

Now deal with it!

 

For two more weeks until my sub is expired!

 

So you will troll the TOR forums because you don't like the game? Here's a suggestion. How about go play something you do like? Drop this game and don't look back. Why hang around if your not having fun playing the game?

[grueber]

I'd push back on that. While you're right that TOR isn't going to "suddenly improve," that's not really saying anything groundbreaking. MMO's never "suddenly" get better. They grow over time.

 

To claim that BioWare won't be able to improve on TOR as time goes on is just flat out wrong.

 

Can Bioware make improvements to the game? Sure.

 

Can Bioware make MAJOR overhauls like world/zone design? Fix their game engine to support 25+ people in combat without it turning into a lagfest? I don't think so.

[thewatcheruatu]

Actually, the one point I'll concede is that expertise is ultimately a bad thing for PvP. I do agree that barriers to entry are detrimental to player-versus-player. I'm already seeing whine posts on the forums about how "fresh 50s" shouldn't even be allowed to PvP. That should be a major red flag to BioWare, especially as they were saying early on that gear would be trivial in PvP (10% tops).

[Tiaa]

So you will troll the TOR forums because you don't like the game? Here's a suggestion. How about go play something you do like? Drop this game and don't look back. Why hang around if your not having fun playing the game?

 

I am playing a game I like.

 

I'll let you figure out which one that is.

[Yukondoit]

Guys why are you even trying.

Making these guys admit or even realise there are some very major flaws with this game is as easy as making a 13 year old girl understand that justin bieber sucks.

 

Fanboys will always be fanboys, and they will never accept facts.

 

nuff said really.

 

Opinions aren't facts.

 

I've read this entire thread and all the hyperbole falls squarely on the detractors of SWTOR. Most of the people who enjoy this game that have posted in this thread have made it abundantly clear that there are bugs and other assorted issues with this game. Not a one has claimed TOR to be perfect.

 

However, those in your camp consistently claim that most things are broken/suck/bugged/unenjoyable. It takes a willing suspension of disbelief on the haters' end to hold some of the views that they do--namely the nonsense about TOR "bleeding subscriptions" or "lacking content" or being a "WoW clone."

 

It's garbage. Pure and simple.

 

Claiming that there's no replayability is not a "fact." It's an opinion. It might be one that you happen to agree with, but under zero circumstances is that factual.

 

These guys don't think TOR is for them after a couple months. Fair enough and they made some valid claims. Your bootlicking doesn't validate their opinions any more or any less.

[Quip]

Kinda makes me wonder. People have put up with far worse and even now tout how awesome it was. Has the gamer nation as a whole turned into such wusses?

 

I think the gaming market is no longer gamers, it's consumers. Consumers have expectations, game companies have traditionally had a tremendous amount of leeway when it came to producing broken, useless product and those days are rapidly coming to a close. Things like SWG and AC were tolerable back in the ancient days of gaming, when gaming was a nerds only venture but games just aren't like that now. Electronic gaming is now full market entertainment and has the budgets to prove it, it also has the increased standard of service that comes with that status to deal with.

 

I suppose people would love to call it entitlement because that's the cheapest insult du jour on most internet forums. I would ask though, would anyone buy a house with no windows and happily wait for the contractor to put them in when he gets to it? If the shingles start to lift after a day is the roofer not going to hear about it? Sure you're house isn't just a game; but being held to a high standard with regards to product doesn't mean the consumer is the weak point.

 

Maybe the real problem is that game developers just aren't up to the task their booming industry has put before them yet. They have a vastly more complex product than the rest of the home entertainment industry for sure, but maybe it's time for gaming companies to start to take their customers a little more seriously. There aren't very many consumer markets where "we'll fix that later" will wash, gaming is rapidly becoming one of them.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Quip

[Loupe]

So you will troll the TOR forums because you don't like the game? Here's a suggestion. How about go play something you do like? Drop this game and don't look back. Why hang around if your not having fun playing the game?

 

I liked it when I bought it.. sort of.. I had reservations because of my technical difficulties.. I still 'sort of' like it because of the overall innovations and attempts at breaking new ground. They need all the feedback they can get before its too late.

 

To improve things we need more speech not less.

[Yukondoit]

I liked it when I bought it.. sort of.. I had reservations because of my technical difficulties.. I still 'sort of' like it because of the overall innovations and attempts at breaking new ground. They need all the feedback they can get before its too late.

 

To improve things we need more speech not less.

 

Feedback should be useful. Useless feedback (as most of the detractor's have provided in this thread) is nothing more than white noise.

[Blotter]

Why hang around if your not having fun playing the game?

 

One word: paycheck.

[DarthBosss]

I'm starting to believe that it's funner to wait and be hyped up for a game than actually play it after release. Really hoping that GW2 doesnt disappoint.

 

And the funny part is that the mods arent even lurking this forum for criticism or feedback, they just want a reason to pull the trigger and delete a post.

[souloferdrick]

Its a decent game. It just doesn't feel like a Star Wars title and that's a big problem. From there, one begins to nitpick on every perceived shortcoming because the game missed the main mark pretty badly.