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[REVIEW] It's been 3 months---where is the game now?

RolyartNala

By RolyartNala
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RolyartNala

RolyartNala

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I’ve been pretty critical of SWTOR since launch, primarily due to the fact that systems that were promised or implemented did not arrive in the form I had imagined or hoped that they would take—yes, I admit, I have projected my own hopes for the game and then been bitterly disappointed (see sig.) But the truth is that if I had no opinion and didn’t care, I wouldn’t have subbed for six months. The fact is that there’s a lot to like in SWTOR; one of the things I like most is its potential. Despite a few rookie missteps and questionable design choices, I know that the development team is working hard to improve what is, on the balance, a solid product. It occurred to me that since I have spent so much time recently criticizing the game, it would be fair for me to spend some time discussing what I liked about the game. Then I thought, “Heck, I’ll just re-review the game. It’s time.”

 

And so I am.

 

THE GOOD

Replayability. As much as I complain about the lackluster playable species options and the tedious linearity of the leveling process, I do enjoy trying out different classes. I have six characters currently—two at 50, a 44, and three 20-somethings. That’s a lot of play time. It’s fair to concede, then, that part of my issue with both playable species and the linear worlds comes from the fact that I have seen them over and over and over. Why am I sick of Taris? Well, maybe because I have six Republic characters that have run through Taris in less than four months. Why do I have six characters? Because the advanced classes are different enough and interesting enough, despite their common origins in the basic classes, for me to want to try them all out. This is good. This is the definition of replayability.

 

PVP. Despite the utter lack of worthwhile world PVP, the PVP gear grind, and my love/hate relationship with Huttball, the core PVP experience—that is, the interplay between the classes—is fun. Really fun. The mirroring works, classes are generally balanced, and skill actually matters once everyone is in Champion gear or better. Gaining mastery over certain classes and specs in PVP, learning what works and what doesn’t, being mindful of ways to improve: none of this could happen if the PVP experience wasn’t rock solid on the ground level of class design. Gear matters more than I wish it would, especially for brand-new max-level characters, and I lament the total failure of Ilum, but at the same time I’m happy that there are things to strive for in PVP, and I’m consoled by the fact that the devs have fessed up to their Ilum failure and are working to fix it. I see a lot of exciting PVP going forward.

 

Modifiable Gear. Love it. I just love this feature. Am I disappointed that pre-1.2 endgame gear won’t be moddable? Yes. Am I disappointed that green & blue-quality gear is not moddable? Yes. But I like that SWTOR gives me a lateral way to individualize and improve my character beyond just getting the latest and greatest Ops gear. 1-49 the system is great. At 50, it will become great once 1.2 goes live. I foresee many credits spent on this, and many heroic quests run to get certain moddable pieces for a particular outfit.

 

Instanced Group Content. Flashpoints, warzones and operations. These are just fun. Experiencing these is the most fun I’ve had in this game; operations and flashpoints, in particular, are refreshingly engaging storywise, and some hard mode flashpoints have challenging boss mechanics. Sure, there is valid criticism to be made here—too linear, not hard enough, didn’t reinvent the wheel—but within the genre of instanced group content, BioWare has excelled. I look forward to more.

 

Group Dialogue Options. I love these, even in content I’ve already seen. Something about interacting with an NPC with my friends is really fun—to shake it up, I make different choices each time. One of my least favorite experiences in the game is being forced to spacebar through these in pick-up groups, for fear of being kicked from the group for slowing things down, especially in content I haven’t yet seen. How stupid. Among friends, however, it’s very enjoyable. At no other time do I feel more proud of my character than when I get to show off my dialogue choices to my friends.

 

Aesthetics. I’ve mentioned this before—SWTOR is a very pretty game, various graphical issues notwithstanding. The environment art team, in particular, produced something extraordinary; many worlds are striking, both internally and when contrasted against other worlds. I wish I had more of an excuse to hang out on some of them at 50. I would love a PVP daily on Tatooine, for instance. Character art-wise I’m less impressed, primarily because of the banal and repetitive endgame gear designs. Luckily, modifiable gear will neatly alleviate the issue in patch 1.2. I can’t wait. (Note to developers: many of us want to look like Star Wars characters, not WoW refugees. Please keep that in mind when designing future gear. We don’t need the ridiculous Gwar-esque shoulderpads that WoW favors.)

 

THE BAD

Low or Imbalanced Server Populations. On an average night on my server you’ll find about 60 people in the Republic Fleet and 200+ in the Imperial one. Republic-side it’s tough to find pick-up groups, and pretty boring to spend so much time soloing on alts or hanging around the fleet doing nothing. I would love to see some tangible incentives for rerolling on the low-pop side—wasn’t the Legacy System touted as incentivizing this? How, exactly? I don’t see it. What about an XP bonus to people who roll on a low-pop faction? Something.

 

The Legacy System. God, have I ranted on this topic. Even I’m sick of my whining. The system going live in 1.2 is not what I would call interesting, useful, fun or worth the development time in the short term. Clearly, they are pushing live a bare-bones framework to which they will later add meat. And truly, even as it is on the PTS, the system has potential. But trying to sell us on how cool the 1.2 version is? Come on, BioWare. Come clean like you did with Ilum. Admit that the system is not ready for prime-time, even months after it was pulled from release. One has only to look at the utterly useless “family tree” system to know that it isn’t a fun or particularly interesting game system, but the framework of what could later be a fun game system. Think on that, folks. Why spin the family tree as something useful when it clearly is not? I mean, vanity pets aren’t useful, but at least other players can see them, so they have aesthetic value. Not so the family tree.

 

Space Combat. I want to like this, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed it periodically. But on the balance, and especially at 50, it’s fairly underwhelming. So are its rewards. Like other things on this list, however, it has great potential. PVP space combat! You know that’s what we want, BioWare. An XvT minigame. Make it so.

 

The UI. Not much to say here anymore, as the UI changes coming in 1.2 look great. It’s bad currently, it’ll be good soon, cool. Shiny. Better late than never.

 

Targeting. Tab-targeting sucks. Trying to click on moving targets sucks. Putting class icons overhead is a start—now let us click on them to target people.

 

Revisitation. In other words, at max level I have no reason to return to the worlds I visited while leveling. All I do is stand around the fleet waiting for group content or PVP. Give us reasons—those worlds were cool and fun and deserve more face time at max level. One suggestion: more and cooler social gear that can be farmed on-planet through world PVP.

 

Not all Flashpoints have Hardmode Versions at 50, and they really should because they are awesome. Make it so—this is a no-brainer.

 

THE MEH

This will just be a quick run-down. I’m either ambivalent or don’t feel strongly about these things either way.

 

Endgame gear appearances

Vanity pets

Speeder variety

Speeder travel speed (shouldn’t they be called…putterers? They certainly aren't speedy.)

Things to do at the fleet (How about a game of sabaac while in the PVP queue?)

Mission linearity while leveling

Solo dialogue choices—do these even matter outside of your class storyline?

Companions—they don’t matter at 50. Why then should we care about them or their stories while leveling?

Final reward for completing Act 3 of your story—where my Big Cool Reward for finishing everything?

Personal starships—nothing to do aboard ship, but 1.2 legacy system options remove me from social contact on the fleet, which is just as bad

Travel/docking stations/starbases

Being taunted by nonplayable NPC species that I want to play but can’t

Lack of viable open-world PVP

 

THE UPSHOT

The game has a long way to go, but it's good on the fundamentals. For SWTOR to really shine, though, it's going to need inventive and smart design choices going forward—not to mention tons more max-level content. I remain optimistic.

Edited by RolyartNala
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alifaraaz

alifaraaz

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Nice review, I kinda agree with a lot of it. Mmos always have potential to improve as chance to fail over the months and sometimes years. Even though 3 months is a long time, I like to hope this game is still young and will become better in time ^^
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Senatsu

Senatsu

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I doubt anyone would have made such a big fuss if planet population wasn't openly shown on your UI. Would have been talks, of course, but not to this degree. And I can't begin to imagine how unbalanced or poor/rich the server populations where in WoW when it first started out, probably equally as bad.

 

Linearity while leveling? I seem to recall the massive cheer from players when Blizzard revisited the old content and made quests less spread out. How is SWTOR any different? Why do people hate it here, but love it in WoW?

 

I agree about basically everything else, with varying degrees of course. I believe this game can go very far, it's just a matter of BioWare coming in with a new feature working in the right way and gets implemented at the right time. Pure luck. That is the only way to get massive sub numbers, other than that it's going to take a lot more time and it might not properly break through.

 

PS: If you think SWTOR is buggy, go play Skyrim. It's a festering cesspool of bugs, never seen anything like it.

Edited by Senatsu
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davidpop

davidpop

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Linearity while leveling? I seem to recall the massive cheer from players when Blizzard revisited the old content and made quests less spread out. How is SWTOR any different? Why do people hate it here, but love it in WoW?

 

 

Who says they love it, the general openion in my guild was that it was a bad change.

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jimmyquinella

jimmyquinella

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Why cant people just post in plain white, all those annoying colors just makes your posts annoying to read.

 

To answer this question, also answers another...

 

 

This is the growing "Mark Twain" trend in forums, where everyone must write the great American novel.

 

The different color font is a tool to achieve the "look at my thread" effect, and no amount of response will suffice. (Unless it's totally positive)

 

If everyone would have ignored the thread, he would have bumped it himself with a clever saying or whatever.....sigh

 

Never ever ever been done before...thank you for the valuable opinion.

Edited by jimmyquinella
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Gallifrayen

Gallifrayen

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Linearity while leveling? I seem to recall the massive cheer from players when Blizzard revisited the old content and made quests less spread out. How is SWTOR any different? Why do people hate it here, but love it in WoW?

 

 

People like it in WoW because the zones aren't also designed to be linear like the quests. In SWTOR the zones are designed to get you from point A to B with pretty well zero exploration which makes the world feel incredibly small.

 

In WoW you see something in the distance you can adventure over to it no matter what(aside from the middle of the ocean). In SWTOR on Ord Mantell for example you can see the massive downed starship which is interesting but you can't go anywhere near it due to invisible walls or fatigue areas.

 

Its these elements of the game that are causing people to notice things like population and what not more since the areas are already rather confined and you dont see anybody for two planets.

 

I think the real problem it actual server capacity I think the FULL status represents 2000 people logged in including both factions. Some servers for WoW house upto 40,000 according to some population reports I've seen.

 

But I believe things will only get better for this game if Bioware doesn't keep its head in the sand with all the low population servers and just merges them already

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RolyartNala

RolyartNala

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This is the growing "Mark Twain" trend in forums, where everyone must write the great American novel.

 

If everyone would have ignored the thread, he would have bumped it himself with a clever saying or whatever.....sigh

 

Never ever ever been done before...thank you for the valuable opinion.

Yes. Because, clearly, reading more than 140 characters at a time is bad. The assault on literacy continues in American pop culture---right here on the forums. :rolleyes:
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Tekkoclarky

Tekkoclarky

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The replayability is crap, different character, exact same zones = boring.

 

Impossible to get grp quests, do FPs because 90% of servers are dead

 

A low pop wow server has more people than a swtor standard server.

Edited by Tekkoclarky
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